Ken Berwitz

Tonight I bit the bullet and watched a few minutes of NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

I happened to tune into a "report" (I put that in quotations, because my idea of a report is presenting all sides of an issue and this did not qualify) on the Obama administration's decision to give 10 states a waiver on the "no child left behind" legislation.

The start of the "report" identified it as "Bush era" legislation.  Later, in the middle of the "report" and long after viewers had been cued to blame Bush, it was mentioned, without any fanfare,that "no child left behind" passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support.  If it was mentioned that Senator Ted Kennedy was a prime mover in this legislation, I did not catch it.

Within the "report", every person who spoke was glad to be rid of it.  To watch the NBC treatment, therefore, suggested that opposition to "no child left behind" was overwhelming, maybe even near-unanimous.  Well, I checked pollingreport.com, and the most recent poll I saw - one that was clearly stacked against "no child left behind"*, showed only 16% saying it should be eliminated.  Call me obtuse, but somehow that does not convince me that everyone is against it.

Then we have the school in Tennessee that was featured in this "report".  We were told that it was "considered a good school", but that it would be in danger under "no child left behind" because half its students were not proficient in reading and, if I remember correctly, math as well.

Does anyone in his/her right mind consider a school with half the children not proficient in reading, and maybe math as well, to be a good school? 

Does anyone in his/her right mind think that the remedy for this "good" school's dishearteningly poor performance is to simply eliminate the testing procedure that identified it's poor performance?

At the end of this "report" I changed channels.  I was too disgusted to watch any more.  Do you blame me?

My thanks to Brian Williams, and NBC News, for reminding me of why I usually look elsewhere for news.

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* The reason I say the poll was clearly stacked against "no child left behind" is its wording:

"What action would you like to see Congress take on the No Child Left Behind education law: eliminate the No Child Left Behind law, keep the law but with major revisions, keep the No Child Left Behind law basically as it is, or don't you know enough to say?"

As you can see, respondents are not able to indicate that  "no child left behind" needs minor revisions - i.e. it is pretty good but could use a little tweaking.  Therefore, if you do not consider it just fine the way it is, you are forced into calling for "major" revisions, even if you don't want them. 

Speaking as a long-time marketing research practitioner, here is how an honest question would have been asked - with a rotation procedure so that half the sample would hear the choices in opposite order:

"What action would you like to see Congress take on the No Child Left Behind education law: eliminate the No Child Left Behind law, keep the law but with major revisions, keep the law but with minor revisions, keep the No Child Left Behind law as it is, or don't you know enough to say?"

This is just one of the many ways that polls can be cooked.  And one of the many reasons you, therefore, should be suspicious every time someone quotes one.