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

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.