Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, January 11, 2013

UPDATE: Joy Resmovits: Obama's Education Approval Stats + Education Rankings, Anti-Common Core Alliance: Ed Today

Joy Resmovits: Education Rankings, Anti-Common Core Alliance: Ed Today:



Obama's Education Approval Stats

All week long, you've heard about how states are doing on education. Now it's the president's turn to be graded.

HuffPost/YouGov asked the American public what they thought about Obama's performance in the education arena. And they think he's doing fine.

First, HuffPost/YouGov this week asked a representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults, Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama has handled the issue of education? Thirty-nine percent indicated they approve, 33 percent said they disapproved, and 28 percent weren't sure. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minute 3.8 percentage points.

What does this mean?

"To have both approval and disapproval of Obama under 40 percent suggests to me that most people haven't thought much about Obama in terms of education and don't associate him with any major education initiatives," 



Education Rankings, Anti-Common Core Alliance: Ed Today

Who Is The Biggest (Educational) Loser? As we reported yesterday, Education Week released its Quality Counts report, one of the most comprehensive education rankings in the United States. For the fifth year in a row, Maryland came out on top. Who can in last? South Dakota. Things like rankings can be a bit trickier than they appear -- for example, some of the differences between states might not be statistically significant. But they are incredibly useful, at least politically.

Amy Hightower, who leads the staff that compiles the report, told me about a time when a lawmaker from a certain state called her up. He'd heard that his state came in first on the soon-to-be-announced report card, and he wanted to verify that. Indeed, Hightower told him, his state had come in a fraction of a point above New York. He told her something like: "I'm going to take that fraction of the point over to the statehouse and use it to advocate for more school funding."

All this made me think South Dakota's barely-passing grade might actually be mighty useful to some politicians