Yesterday I ran a post about an editorial in the Chicago Tribune. The editorial touted the results of a poll which the newspaper conducted in partnership with the Joyce Foundation. The poll purportedly supported privatization, merit pay, evaluation of teachers by test scores, and every other failed nostrum of the Rahm Emanuel-ALEC crowd.
But a Chicago parent group called PURE (Parents United for Responsible Education) says that the Tribune poll is a fraud. It underrepresented parents of children who attend public schools and it underrepresented African Americans. Based on PURE’s findings, the poll shows what white Chicagoans think that the children of black Chicagoans need.
According to PURE’s analysis, the poll was skewed towards privatization and it did not report its own findings accurately:
Who responded:
- 50% of those polled were white. Less than 9% of CPS students are white.
- 30% of those polled make more than $ 75,000 a year. 87% of CPS students are from low-income families that qualify for federal free or reduced lunches.
- 43% of those polled do not know a Chicago Public School teacher or teachers’ union member. Really?
Of course, the Trib claims that results were “weighted” to assure a mix consistent with city demographics…but then, like Mayor Rahm, most of the white people in Chicago send their children to private schools.
Key results the Trib decided not to tell you about:
- The most popular answer to their question about what to do about underperforming schools was “devote more resources while keeping the staff intact” (37%). The least selectedanswers were “close the school and transfer students to a higher-performing school” (only 6%) and “allow an experienced nonprofit to come in and run the school” (18.8%) (question 24).
- Nearly as many people think the CPS budget should be balanced by raising taxes on businesses as by closing schools. Oops! (question 31).
This kind of thing could be stopped if elected officials were required by law to send their children to public schools, preferably the ones to which they are zoned.
God Bless You Dianne
America Loves you
RUN for office now Please save America from these idiots
Ari Steinfeld
For Rahm and company:
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
“Facts,” as John Adams famously said, “are stubborn things.” Who owns the Tribune?
The Tribune has always been a Republican-leaning paper. At present, it’s more like a Big Business run paper (you do know of our Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, do you not?) If we don’t stop them, the Koch brothers will be the owners very soon, and the paper will go from bad to worse. Sign the petition on the Daily Kos!
Joyce Foundation’s Educational Director, still Butch Trusty? Who worked with Edison Schools? The pro-charter Joyce Foundation? Now, who controls the Chicago Tribune? Will the Koch Brothers carry on with the obvious skewing of the truth if they should purchase the Chicago Tribune? How is this a big surprise?
Excellent that “the rest of the story” can be publicized on blogs like yours, Diane. Thank you.
They called a union organizer and he recorded the poll…here is the transcript:
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4006
I found the questions they asked were designed to solicit pro-reform responses. They probably could have given the questionnaire to a more representative sample and obtained similar results. They were also dishonest in the way they reported results by putting a negative spin on data that wasn’t as negative as they would have liked.