making fun of oklahoma high schoolers

[walkitout]

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279410

This is slightly better coverage than some of the other articles, in that they actually supply the questions. What they _do not_ mention is that Strategic Vision is a Republican polling organization.

I'm not entirely certain what they're up to with this, but given that conservatives paid a conservative polling organization to get this outcome, I, for one, would be asking what's up. Like, did they repeat this on many small groups of Oklahoma high school students until they got the result they were looking for?

It bothers me that MSNBC political talk shows repeat this as kind of a "lighter side" story without mentioning who did the study, either who paid for it or who did the work. It feeds into a Conservative Southerners Are Stupid narrative, and it feels a little too much like we're being led right down a garden path. And often, that doesn't end well.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Good point. That really is an impossible result if the questions were answered seriously. I can see some of them being difficult, but not the first president one. And also, what on earth DID they answer? There isn't anyone to confuse George Washington *with*, unless you know enough to have heard about the presidents of the Congress.

More info, including common incorrect answers

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

http://www.ocpathink.org/publications/perspective-archives/september-2009-volume-16-number-9/?module=perspective&id=2321

Re: More info, including common incorrect answers

[walkitout]

Is it weirding anyone else out that the sample of questions is "random" but the sample of students has no adjectives -- and there is _no_ methodology given on how the students were selected?

This thing _reeks_. There is something seriously wrong with it.

Re: More info, including common incorrect answers

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

A commenter on the Huffington Post said:

"When a conservative think tank did the same thing in Arizona it turned out the methodology used to conduct the survey was severely flawed. They couldn't even confirm they spoke with high school students, and if they reached a household where no English was spoken (and it just so happened that almost 30 percent of the homes they called fell into this category) they marked down that none of he questions they asked were answered correctly no matter who answered the phone. I suspect the same thing happened in Oklahoma.

"BTW, a Phoenix TV station did a follow up and stopped 100 high school kids across the city randomly, and more than 97 percent of kids were able to answer all the questions correctly."

I haven't checked up on the Arizona study yet, but this sounds plausible, and I looked at a bit of the poster's comment history and zie didn't sound like a nut, as far as all that goes.

Re: More info, including common incorrect answers

[walkitout]

Words fail. I was sort of wondering how a phone survey could be appropriately randomized, and how they could be sure the kid (or someone else in the house) wasn't totally shining them on. _I should_ have wondered about the potential language problem (makes you wonder what they did with hang ups, doesn't it?).

I still don't understand _why_ they would do this. R. thinks they're trying to diss public education to pull support away from it.

Re: More info, including common incorrect answers

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I'd expect a higher proportion of non-English-speakers in Arizona than Oklahoma (just checked census data -- yeah, OK 7.4% vs. AZ 25.9% for other than English spoken at home, which is presumably proportional to the figures on who doesn't speak English at all), but even so.

Re: More info, including common incorrect answers

[walkitout]

Thanks for finding that!