New Poll – Teacher Support For Common Core Plummets 30%!

Since it’s a well known fact that polls drive elections, you can bet that the latest one just released by  Education Next is making a huge splash this week.  It’s instilling fear in any politician who naively thought they could “wait out” the growing tidal-wave of Common Core opposition.  It is now crystal clear that such tactics will not fly.  The polling data shows that across the board, public support for Common Core has gone down substantially over the past year, and opposition to it has grown.  While this is good news, what is really rocking the political world of profiteering, corporate Ed Reformers, is the poll’s finding that the demographic that has had the greatest loss of support (30 percentage points), is the one most familiar with and closest to it – classroom teachers.

Details of the study were featured in yesterday’s Huffington Post article, Support For The Common Core Plummets, Especially Among Teachers, which began:

Teachers are losing faith in the Common Core State Standards, the national education guidelines adopted by a majority of states.

According to a poll out today by Education Next, a quarterly education journal from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, 40 percent of teachers said they opposed the Common Core — more than triple the 12 percent who said they were against the standards in 2013.

Public opposition to the Common Core also has increased. While 65 percent supported the Common Core in 2013, a slim majority — 53 percent — expressed approval in 2014. Broken down by party lines, Republicans were much more likely to have switched their opinion than Democrats.

As is nicely illustrated in a bar graph in the article, teacher support for Common Core dropped from 76% in 2013, all the way down to 46% in 2014!  It seems that the more teachers are exposed to Common Core, the less they like it.

Not surprisingly, it’s now common knowledge that Common Core is officially a political litmus-test, particularly for Republicans seeking office.  This latest poll goes a long way in confirming what has already become obvious – any Republican presidential candidate who wants to remain viable, had better realize that ignoring or rebranding Common Core will render them dead in the water.

This is a message that has not been lost on Governor Bobby Jindal, who is quickly shoring up his credentials on the subject, with his fight in court this week to remove Common Core from Louisiana.   Common Core opponents are hopeful that his intentions are genuine and that his goal is not to tweak, rebrand, and slap his state’s seal on a slightly-modified Common Core, as occurred in Indiana.  Instead, Jindal’s comments, “this is really about content; this is about curriculum,” suggest that he understands that the Common Core fight is as much about content, as it is about federalism.  This is a point that was lost on the Pence administration.

When Governor Jindal told parents in Iowa, “just look at some of the math…it makes no sense,” he was speaking from experience, having looked at his own son’s Common Core homework.  It signaled to them that he “gets it,” he’s listening, and he’s one of them.  In the end, it may be just that – Governor Jindal’s ability to personally relate to parents who are living the Common Core nightmare – which gives him a distinct advantage over other potential contenders.  One in particular comes to mind, Governor Mike Pence, who may soon regret that he didn’t take parents’ content concerns more seriously, when he was called to do so.