A recent poll reported in the Los Angeles Times produced interesting results and a divide between Latino and white voters.
Latino voters support standardized tests, while most white oppose them.
Both groups support public schools (as compared to privately managed schools), but Latino voters support them by larger margins.
A majority of Latino voters, 55%, said mandatory exams improve public education in the state by gauging student progress and providing teachers with vital information. Nearly the same percentage of white voters said such exams are harmful because they force educators to narrow instruction and don’t account for different styles of learning.
None of the voters know that the new Common Core exams provide no information about how a student is progressing other than a score; they offer no diagnostic information whatever so there is nothing that a teacher or parent learns other than how many answers they got right compared to others in the same grade.
Voters were critical of tenure, assuming it means a lifetime job, with whites more critical than Latino and black voters.
Latino and black voters believe that more money should be put into schools in poor neighborhoods to improve them:
Nearly half of voters surveyed said publicly funded, independently run charter schools offer a higher-quality education than traditional public schools. Still, a majority of white voters, 56%, believe the state should invest in improving existing schools instead of spending additional money to create more charters. Minority voters held on to that belief more strongly, with support between 67% and 69%.
Eight out of 10 black and Latino voters said putting more money into schools in economically or socially disadvantaged areas would improve the quality of public education somewhat or a lot, compared with 68% of white voters.
The article includes an interview with Dan Schnur of the University of Southern California, brother of Jon Schnur, the architect of Race to the Top. USC conducted the poll.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I read the article. SAD. The Latino community is being used. The article needs to dig deeper. Besides, it’s from the LA Times.
LikeLike
The person who conducted the survey is exactly why it should be viewed with suspicion. Lies, damned lies, and statistics…
LikeLike
They should look at the U Texas at Austin research.
http://www.thelittleeducationreport.ca/
LikeLike
Based on the summary of findings reported, points to the deficiency in focused, intense community based education on the actual deficiences of charter schools and the meaning of teacher tenure. Is there an organization ready to out reach into the Black and Latino communities?
LikeLike
Having worked as an ESL teacher with a Latino population that was mostly Mexican and Salvadorian, I understand some of the response. In general, Latino parents are very trusting of schools, and they are not used to questioning any policies or rules. It is usually the mother that deals with the schools, and it would be rare for a Latino mother to challenge the authority or question the purpose of anything the school provides. It would take considerable reeducation for them to question or resist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Differing race and class perceptions reflect varied lived experiences. Many who live in poor neighborhoods have lost confidence in their schools and want something different and better. Seemingly contradictory ideas– faith in charter school quality, while wanting investment in existing public schools– reflect the success of “reformers” messaging.
To be successful, opponents of current reform, need to reframe the discussion not just with the needed critique of over-testing and market-based solutions, but in presenting resonant improvement alternatives.
Click to access The-strategic-campaign-needed-to-save-public-education-—-in-nine-steps-The-Washington-Post1.pdf
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have to agree. Whether Latino or African American, people who have lived in neighborhoods whose schools have been “underwhelming” for decades are looking for answers. However, when the answers are simplistic, overly hyped, and filled with exaggerations, it is easy to mislead those how are most hopeful. That is the “successful” strategy of Charters.
LikeLike
Yes, what’s offered is a FALSE solution to the big white elephant standing in the room raising it’s trunk and trumpeting … POVERTY! DUH…
Remember, 3 strikes and you’re our. Egads …
LikeLike
Thank you for your strategic plan to save public education. While reading, I was reminded that we actually had many of the elements you describe in our teaching in the ’80s and ’90s. We had moved toward the notion of a community of learners. We worked in cooperative groups, and we emphasized authentic reading, writing, thinking and problem solving. We had started portfolio assessments; yet we still had one standardized test at the end of the year. There were no punitive outcomes from the testing for either students or teachers. It was a time of great satisfaction for the teaching profession.
Over night it all changed with NCLB and the no excuses mantra. Teachers tried to keep many of the constructivist elements of the ’80s and ’90s, but the threats and consequences from the testing started to weigh everyone down. Portfolio assessment was lost in the fray as it was time consuming. Teachers had to swim very quickly to stay ahead of the testing current.
In addition to the suggestions you make, the government must take steps to show that they want to save public schools. They need to regulate and oversee charter schools. Today’s privateers are not “laboratories of innovation;” they are money pits. Through the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act 2000 and the New Market Tax Credits, the government put a price on the head of our students. These laws promote corporate interest in education. These schools are backed by people with deep pockets that are looking for a tax shelter. This is not the purpose of education.
LikeLike
I think this is one area where you would get a more accurate take if you asked only the adults with children in public schools.
I find a lot of adults have no idea what’s going in public schools. They assume “testing” means the Iowa tests they took once a year, which no one made a big deal about. We have a community committee meeting now on our local public schools and people who don’t have children in school were really surprised at how much testing has changed.
Attending public schools is something a huge group of us have in common. I think we tend to assume “public school’ means “like the school we attended when we were children”.
The plain fact is I didn’t take two sets of difficult demanding tests over days and days in the spring, and that’s what my 6th grader is doing. It seems the least we could do as adults is admit that, rather than this breezy brush-off and insistence “we all did it” or it’s just “like a checkup at the doctor”. I don’t know what kind of “check ups” other people get but my kid’s takes 20 minutes.
If we’ve decided to do this battery of demanding testing beginning in 3rd grade at least we could accept responsibility for that decision instead of pretending we all had this experience. No, we didn’t.
LikeLike
Are the 55% assuming fiscal austerity and limited city, state, and federal funding, or are they assuming the city will find 2 billion dollars of help for those who are identified as behind?
In a fixed sum budget, an hour of testing is one more hour falling behind in learning and being prepared.
LikeLike
Correction on who did the LA Times Survey. This survey was not conducted by USC. It was conducted for USC and the LATimes by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner , a Washington DC-based firm with international offices. Among its political clients, almost all are democrats. The survey was also produced by some undisclosed relationship with American Viewpoint, a Virginia-based Republican polling company. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has the copyright on the survey. There is no overview of the survey at American Viewpoint, but that is provided on the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner website.
The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner website lists the LA Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences as clients, and t does so graphically–as if this USC College and the newspaper are connected at the hip in some quasi-permanent relationship. Is the College using the LA Times for PR? Is the LA Times using the College to legitimate some stories. http://www.gqrr.com/#our-clients
The College provided naming rights to Dana and David Dornsife for their 2011 donation of $200 million dollars. Money is from steel production of the kind used worldwide to build skyscrapers.
Just wondering why this survey was conducted now March/April 2015, who paid for the survey, how much that cost, and why the whole survey seemed to be about race relations in California giving particular attention to the immigrant population, policing, and charter versus public schools.
Maybe someone from the College or LA Times can clear up this relationship, as well as the timing and character of the survey and who is footing the bill to CREATE this news.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Laura: You make some excellent points. Thanks for sharing.
LikeLike
In California, we are about 2 years behind NY in implementing CC$$. I believe those sentiments will change quickly with the implementation of SBAC testing. We had a trial run last year and this will be our first significant testing spring.
LikeLike
LA Times is in the same family as the Chicago Tribune. I remember the push-poll the Trib did in conjunction with NORC and the Joyce Foundation which found – surprise! – that people want more charters and that the unions are too powerful. Diane posted about it, but it’s been at least a year ago now. I’m sure this “poll” was every bit as valid. Cough, cough.
LikeLike
The LA Times is now run by Beutner, a Wall Street billionaire. It is no longer part of the Chicago Trib. It is even more firmly connected with Eli Broad and Richard Riordan than ever and they are permitted many column inches to write op-ed material lauding themselves as philanthropists whom LA residents should appreciate.
The editorial board continues to support charter schools and these billionaires. Sadly their writers are kept strictly in line and they can generally offer only the Times party line.
Laura Champman explains this latest questionable venture into surveying CC.
It is sad to see that all comers seem to prey on the newer Latino poverty level community. Ben Austin was a main manipulator with Parent Revolution….but it is not monolithic in all inner city areas of color that this kind of report of CC takes place.
The staunch and long time African American community in LA is very sophisticated and has used PRev to their own ends to negotiate for changes in their local schools without charterizing. They are not fooled by lies and false promises.
The language and education barrier of low income Chicanos/Latinos in service work and as field laborers leaves them easy pickings to be led astray by the corporatists. However, the second generations are well represented in our legislature….and these are the men and women who benefited from LAUSD public schools. Head of the Ca. Senate, Kevin de Leon is one, and former mayor Tony Villaraigosa another…there are too many to cite.
Dan Schnur is a decent guy who teaches and runs the Unruh School of Public Policy at USC. I wonder what family dinners are like however, when he and his Obama/Duncan controlled brother are at the table together?
LikeLike
The 0.1% continues to buy up the traditional media, so they can control the message they want the 99.9% to hear.
But the 99.9% still mostly has social media and word of mouth and the growth of the Opt Out movement is evidence that it works.
Keep an eye on the 0.1%, because their next step—if they are not already doing it—will be an attempt to gain control over social media on the Internet—but they will learn the hard way that not even the Chinese Communist Party has been able to do this in China, and if the CCP can’t do it, I don’t think the 0.1% in the U.S. will succeed either. Blogging and other forms of Social Media has become the free press of China. :o)
http://ilookchina.net/2015/04/14/there-are-almost-600-million-internet-users-in-china/
LikeLike
the roll of social media in subverting the cmmunication hegemony on the 1% is going to be of increasing importance as traditional media becomes an arm of the 1%. social media will not supplant leather to the side walk out reach community outreach and education in poor, working class and the ever dwindling middle class communities. This is the type of work that unions should support both financiallly and people.
LikeLike
But it seems that the national unions have been hijacked too. Most of the action to save the public schools that I’ve read is taking place in local unions at the school district level.
LikeLike
Just wait a few years when they find out these tests and the charter schools are actually going to be the vehicles that deny their children a properly funded education with a school nearby. The tests will be used to exclude their children from the upper schools they so desire, and the charters will siphon off the money from their community. Let’s see what a survey shows in a couple of years after they get what they supposedly want.
LikeLike
I sent the author of the article in the L A Times your articles and another article that appeared in today’s N Y Times.
I question how they presented this to parents and also question the results.
LikeLike
Polls can be rigged by how the questions are written. Has anyone seen the questions?
LikeLike
It’s amazing how well the marketers were able to control the message while our voices were silenced. It will take years to combat the damage the so-called reformers have wrought.
Also, Blacks and Latinos need to know their children are as bright as white children and on some level truly believe these tests prove that. It’s so complicated, it cannot be simply seen as a function of race, but one tied up with class and legitimacy
LikeLike
This is the most disheartening part of your post:
“None of the voters know that the new Common Core exams provide no information about how a student is progressing other than a score; they offer no diagnostic information whatever so there is nothing that a teacher or parent learns other than how many answers they got right compared to others in the same grade.”
I wonder how respondents would have answered this question:
“Do you support the use of class time to prepare your child for standardized tests that provide no information about how a student is progressing and offer no diagnostic information to teachers?”
LikeLike