Rasmussen
What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls
Saturday, June 28, 2014

Generic Congressional Ballot: Democrats 40%, Republicans 38%

27% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction

48% Think U.S. Currently In Recession

Americans continue to worry about the state of the nation’s schools and believe the federal government still doesn’t get it.

Just 17% of voters believe U.S. public schools today provide a world-class education, down nine points from 2011 when President Obama first declared that as a necessary goal.

But support for Common Core among Americans with school-age children has plummeted from 52% to 34%, as more now question whether the new national education standards will actually improve student performance. An increasing number of states are abandoning the standards which many complain force teachers to focus too much on one-size-fits-all standardized testing.

Fifty-four percent (54%) think schools place too much emphasis on standardized testing these days, and just 26% believe student scores on these tests should be the major factor in determining how well a school is doing.

The end result is that just 19% of voters think most high school graduates today have the skills needed to enter college or the workforce.

Still, increasing numbers of young Americans are taking on crippling amounts of student loan debt to get college degrees that don’t help them get a job. Only 28% of Americans believe most college graduates have the skills to enter the workforce.

The president is proposing a government rating system that will tie a college’s performance in several areas including the earning power of its graduates to federal student financial aid. Americans like that idea, but they don’t trust the government to do the rating system fairly...

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