Interesting polls, other than the North Pole, that are in the news

As the year-end draws nearer, polling organizations provide a look into the likes and dislikes of Americans.

**The Gallup organization’s daily tracking poll of December 16-18 shows that only 23 percent of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country. Not surprisingly, a breakdown shows that 38 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of independents said they were satisfied with the way things were going in the U.S. throughout 2014, compared with just 10 percent of Republicans.

**The U-3 unemployment rate stands at 5.9 percent and the underemployed rate at 14.9 percent, based on Gallup’s thirty-day rolling average, and President Obama’s approval rating stands at 43 percent approval to 52 percent disapproval, having moved from a virtual tie at 46 percent in August of last year.

**Gallup finds Congress just a hair higher than its all-time record low approval rating of 14 percent, at 15 percent. Just 13 years ago Congress was rated at a record 56 percent, but its rating has not been higher than 20 percent in the last five years, or in six of the last seven years.

**A Rassmussen poll found that 86 percent of U.S. adults are proud to be Americans, and 92 percent believe that U.S. citizenship is very important. However, only 40 percent of voters like President Obama’s unilateral amnesty for up to five million illegal aliens to remain in the country. Roughly half think the U.S. will suffer because of the amnesty and that it will increase illegal immigration.

**The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index tracks daily how Americans evaluate their lives on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. The Index shows 55 percent are thriving, 42 percent struggling, 4 percent suffering, and 12 percent are under stress.

**A USA Today poll in November asked whether respondents favor approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project. By 60 percent to 25 percent, respondents favor approving the project, with 14 percent unsure.

**On its Website, Gallup notes “U.S. federal government workers are less engaged than the rest of the U.S. workforce. On average, 27 percent of federal government employees are engaged in their jobs in 2014, compared with 31 percent of all other workers in the U.S. With more than 2 million federal employees, this lack of engagement is costing the federal government an estimated $18 billion in lost productivity annually, or approximately $9,000 per employee.”

Gallup says that engaged employees feel connected to their organization and work to move it forward, while those who are not engaged may meet the expectations of their job, but don’t do anything extra for it, and those who are actively disengaged actually undermine their engaged co-workers. “Those federal government employees who are actively disengaged, combined with those employees who are not engaged, translates into 11 percent lost productivity across the government, according to a Gallup analysis. This suggests that nearly $9,000 of the average $78,467 federal employee salary is not producing benefits for the agency or the general public.”

**A Rassmussen Reports poll found that respondents believe America’s Founders would view the nation today as a failure by a margin of 46 percent to 36 percent, with 18 percent being unsure. The Founders, a group that includes Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison, would not approve of what is going on in America today, according to this poll, and it is comforting to note that contemporary Americans agree with the Founders. But, will this dissatisfaction actually lead to a return to the founding principles of limited government and a high level of personal liberty?

**Fully 78 percent of participants like the health care they received before the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare was passed, but they believe that the health care they have been getting in recent years will get worse under Obamacare.

**Gallup found that among 11 professions nurses have the highest honesty and ethical standards, with 80 percent ranking them high or very high. Doctors, pharmacists, police officers and clergy round out the top five, while Members of Congress rank last at 7 percent.

**A Rassmussen poll in April reflected that 54 percent of participants consider the federal government a threat to individual liberty, while just 22 percent see government as a protector of individual rights, a number that stood at 30 percent five months earlier. Thirty-seven percent actually fear the federal government, while 47 percent do not, and 17 percent are uncertain.

**Gallup asked public school teachers if they have experienced each of seven possible emotional reactions to the Common Core State Standards (Worried, Frustrated, Resigned to it, Hopeful, Confident, Angry, or Enthusiastic), and 65 percent said Worried, 62 percent said Frustrated, and 57 percent said Resigned to it, while only 20 percent said Enthusiastic, 24 percent said Angry, and 27 percent said Confident. Forty-nine percent said they were Hopeful.

Where parents of public school students are concerned, 35 percent view Common Core negatively, 33 percent view it positively, and 32 percent aren’t familiar with it or don’t have an opinion. Gallup found a shift toward negative feelings since April when 35 percent were positive and 28 percent were negative.

Best wishes to all for a Happy Chanukah and a Merry Christmas!

Update from the classroom: Common Core is on the chopping block

Commentary by James Shott

With US secondary school students lagging behind many other nations in educational performance, combating this with a voluntary education initiative developed and operated by the states received much favorable attention.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative “seeks to establish consistent educational standards [in English Language Arts and Mathematics] across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce,” according to the Common Core State Standards Initiative Website.

At one point 45 of the 50 states had signed up. But as time passed and the program evolved, 17 states have seen things that have caused them to adopt the language standards but not the math standards, to question the program generally, or to drop out altogether.

The most recent to bail out is Oklahoma, following the lead of Indiana in March, followed just days before Oklahoma’s exit last week by South Carolina.

“We are capable of developing our own Oklahoma academic standards that will be better than Common Core,” Governor Mary Fallin said in a statement released by her office. “Unfortunately, federal overreach has tainted Common Core. President Obama and Washington bureaucrats have usurped Common Core in an attempt to influence state education standards.”

She continued: “What should have been a bipartisan policy is now widely regarded as the president’s plan to establish federal control of curricula, testing and teaching strategies.” Oklahoma will return to the standards previously in place, and develop new standards aimed at meeting the needs of industry and academia.

In South Carolina, Governor Nikki Haley signed legislation that requires a committee to review and implement a new set of academic standards by the 2015-16 school year, and return to the former assessment tests by 2014-15.

In a letter supporting the legislation, Gov. Haley said the following: “South Carolina’s educational system has at times faced challenges … that cannot be solved by increasing our dependence on federal dollars and the mandates that come with them. Just as we should not relinquish control of education to the Federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states.”

As an early supporter of Common Core, Indiana’s recent rejection is seen as pivotal, perhaps encouraging other states to abandon the program, as well. What drove the Hoosiers away? Growing criticism over costs imposed by the program, and concerns that eventually it would evolve into a national education standard.

Stating Indiana’s thinking on the subject, Governor Mike Pence said, “I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level. By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high, and I commend members of the General Assembly for their support.”

Missouri reportedly also has legislation to withdraw awaiting approval by governor Jay Nixon. And North Carolina is moving in that direction.

Complaints from North Carolina parents over the unfamiliar material and believing the standards to be an intrusion by the federal government prompted legislative action that would maintain state control over education standards. Both houses of the legislature have approved measures to replace Common Core standards with new ones to be created by an appointed commission.

These two measures must be reconciled and submitted to Governor Pat McCrory, who has expressed support for Common Core, before the withdrawal will be complete. The measures passed each house by margins that could override a veto. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia also are resisting the program.

This resistance actually began several years ago, just after the standards were developed in 2009. Five members of the 30-person Common Core validation committee refused to sign on to the standards, two of whom are experts in content: Stanford University’s James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics, and the University of Arkansas’ Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform emerita and co-author of Massachusetts’ highly regarded ELA standards.

When 17 percent of the committee doesn’t support the standards the committee designed, that signals trouble in paradise.

These rejections reveal two important things. First, these 17 states recognize Common Core is something different than what they were led to believe it would be, and objections to some specific content and methods arose, convincing some states that they can do better. And, second, these states are resisting the statist, authoritarian federal government, and its “Washington knows best,” one-size-fits-all approach.

Back in the day, when the American education system was doing a great job of educating young people, state, county and local school systems bore responsibility for deciding what goals were important and how to achieve them. Somehow, without the central planning of the federal government, American high school graduates managed to be well prepared for the next step in their lives.

America does best when Americans are left to think for themselves and to make decisions and follow the course that best suit their purposes. It’s called “freedom,” and once was the hallmark of our nation.

That’s what built the country, and that is what will restore it.

Cross-posted from Observations

Common Core State Standards Initiative has uncommonly bad problems

I attended a lecture by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush last year at which he spoke positively about the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS), explaining that governors and state commissioners or secretaries of education developed the program. It is entirely voluntary, and is designed to set uniform high education standards in the states that participate.

The idea seems potentially beneficial, given that the states control it and not the federal government. In support, Mr. Bush cites the fact that the U.S. has fallen behind many other countries in educational attainment, and that CCSS can reverse this trend.

“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Bush said recently at the Broward Workshop business breakfast, as reported by The Miami Herald. “In Asia today, they don’t care about children’s self esteem. They care about math, whether they can read – in English – whether they understand why science is important, whether they have the grit and determination to be successful.”

Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio program the host breached the idea that CCSS would be a national curriculum. “In fact, standards are different than curriculum,” Mr. Bush responded, “and that’s where I think the biggest misnomer is where people legitimately get concerned. I would be concerned if we had a national curriculum influenced by the federal government. My God, I’d break out in a rash.” The curriculum, he said, “should be driven by state and local school districts and by policy makers at the state level.”

So, CCSS sounds pretty good. Ideas often fail to reach their expectations, however, and where Common Core is concerned there are numerous examples of how its implementation fails to match up with the high ideals Mr. Bush believes in.

To say that the Common Core approach to basic mathematics is different takes understatement to a new level. If the problem is to find the sum of 26 and 17, we would normally put the addends one above the other, add 7 and 6 to get 13, put the 3 down and carry the 1, then add the 1, the 2 and the other 1 to get 43.

Not so with Common Core math. Here’s how CCSS does it:

Add 26 + 17 by breaking apart numbers to make a ten. Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10. Since 6 + 4 = 10, use 4. Think: 17 = 4 + 13. Add 26 + 4 = 30. Add 30 + 13 = 43. So, 26 + 17 = 43.

Does the CCSS method work? Well, yes, it works. And perhaps some beneficial learning takes place. However it is somewhat like when trying to fly from Washington, DC to New York City, you first fly to Nashville, TN, then to Atlanta, GA, then to Boston, MA then to NYC.

Most important in education, however, is the content presented in the classroom. The most high-minded goals are meaningless if what students actually experience ignores them.

Testifying before the Alabama Senate Education Committee, Becky Gerritson focused primarily on an 11^th grade literature textbook called The American Experience: 1900-Present by Prentice Hall, with the words “Common Core Edition” on the cover. She explained that it contains anti-American themes and misrepresents our nation’s founding, and she supports a bill to allow local school districts to opt out of Common Core.

But where she really got the Committee’s attention was when she began reading six sentences of Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye, which she said is recommended reading for 11^th graders.

What she read produced gasps from the audience, and the chairman stopped her, and did not allowed her to finish. You see, this book recommended for 11^th graders is the story of an 8-year old black girl. The six sentences she chose to read were a graphic depiction of a sex act between a pedophile and the 8-year-old, and contained, among several pornographic phrases that are inappropriate for this column, the F-word that brought the testimony to a close.

Defenders of Common Core might argue that most 11^th graders are familiar with such language and concepts, but that is totally beside the point. It is completely inappropriate for a high school classroom.

And political pressure is also present.

According to Susan Kimball, a kindergarten teacher of 20 years in the Sikeston, Missouri Public School District, her opposition to Common Core resulted in bullying and intimidation from administrators and fellow teachers.

Ms. Kimball related that she was told at an in-service meeting to “be careful about what you post on Facebook, or talk about in the public regarding Common Core.  Don’t say anything negative.  It could affect your job.” But she continued to speak out.

“When I turned in a personal day request to come support the rally for House Bill 1490,” she said, “I was asked by my principal, ‘Do you really want that in your personnel file?’ And then I was bullied and ostracized by my administration, a few other teachers and the president of the school board.  And that continues today,” she said.

Common Core must be carefully investigated and cleaned up before being adopted. Or maybe just scrap it.