This little factoid came across my feed this afternoon from the billionaire funded ChartSchools Work, which tweets under the transparently misleading name @Fam4ExcSchools. Their biases are painfully obvious, so it’s no wonder the responses they get to their tweets are inevitably antagonistic. You have to admire the nerve it took to compose this:
Poll finds 79% of NYers want to protect or expand public charter schools. #’s even higher w/ public school parents. chart.rs/uKSHZ
I knew I smelled a rat, so I immediately clicked on the link and was taken to Quinnipiac University’s latest poll that focused on funding a universal pre-K in NYC, with a few softballs about charter schools thrown into the mix. I’m no fan of Quinnipiac polls, especially because polling is much trickier than it looks. It seems to me that every college with a copy of SPSS and a bunch of bored students looking to pick up some extra beer money should not be in the business of determining the public’s opinion on anything.
Here’s the exact wording of the question that was asked:
As you may know, charter schools are operated by private or non-profit organizations. The schools are paid for with public funds and do not charge tuition. Do you think the mayor should increase the number of charter schools, decrease the number of charter schools, or keep the number of charter schools the same?
Hmmm, it seems like that question was just a teensy-weensy bit biased. Well, okay, maybe really over the top, liar-liar-pants-on-fire biased. I wonder how the responses would have been if it had been worded this way:
As you may know, charter schools are operated by private or non-profit organizations. The schools are paid for with public funds and do not charge tuition. Charter schools displace students who were already attending the school in a building, requiring them to relocate to a different school much further away. The operators of charter schools pay themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while working their young teachers for 12-14 hours a day, who then leave the school after 1- 2 years. The student attrition rates at charter schools is far higher than that found in public schools, and they educate a far lower percentage of students with learning disabilities and limited English proficiency. Charter schools regularly accept funding from hedge fund billionaires, which they use to pay for extra services which boost their standardized test scores.
Do you think the mayor should increase the number of charter schools, decrease the number of charter schools, or keep the number of charter schools the same?
I’m very curious to see how that would poll. What was most interesting is that even with this lead in, they could only get 40% of people to agree that the number of charters should increase, and nearly half still wanted them to pay rent. Imagine what the numbers would have been if the question had actually been “fair.”
