2,411 registered California voters were polled about their knowledge on Common Core standards and the results revealed that despite fostering strong opinions, many were misinformed about the standards themselves, especially those who thought they knew better.

The poll, administered by "PACE, a research center that analyzes California education policy, and the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California – found that the 10 percent of voters who say they know 'a lot' about the Common Core were the most likely to get true or false questions about the standards wrong," said The Hechinger Report.

For those who said they knew a lot about the Common Core, 52 percent did not know that the standards only apply to English and Math.

While many of those surveyed were honest about being unsure when answering questions (60 percent of all surveyed admitted to knowing little to none about the standards,) the ones who were adamant they knew were the ones most likely to be wrong.

"Asked whether states are allowed to add content to the Common Core, which they are, 35 percent of those who said they knew a lot about the Common Core chose false compared to 20 percent of all those surveyed – 24 percent of all voters surveyed got that question right, while 32 percent of those who said they knew a lot did," the article said.

According to Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education, this indicates that Common Core proponents can not do as much as they should to help combat the rampant misinformation that exists regarding the standards.

“ 'To my knowledge there has been no organized effort to combat all of the misinformation...I do think the advocates could argue that lots of kids are arriving to college unprepared, or that math is math and your zip code shouldn’t drive how you learn math. There are many arguments that can be made to the public that I’m just not hearing," said Polikoff to The Hechinger Report.

Read the full article here and comment with your thoughts below.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

09/09/2015