Group's Common Core poll killed after non-members vote

The New York State School Boards Association on Monday killed an online poll of its members about the Common Core after it appeared that nonmembers were responding to the poll in great numbers.

The association invalidated the poll after it was shared on Facebook, and the group said it would ignore the results. Before long, opponents of the Common Core were questioning the association's motives on Twitter.

"The whole purpose of the poll is to get feedback from school board members," said David Albert, spokesman for the association, which represents about 4,000 school board members. "The poll is designed exclusively for our members. Something went awry here. We could not use the results."

The association sent an email late last week to members, providing a link to a "pulse poll" about the Common Core. The group has used dozens of these polls over the last five or six years, Albert said, to get a quick, nonscientific sense of what school board members think about timely issues.

The association does not require a password because it wants members to quickly respond, Albert said. At some point, the link to the poll was shared on Facebook and possibly other social media.

A pulse poll normally receives 500 or 600 responses, Albert said. But the three-question Common Core poll had received about 2,700 responses per question when it was taken down.

"There is some misperception that this is a public poll," Albert said. "It is for school board members only. Perhaps we should emphasize that in the future."

A screenshot of the poll posted Monday afternoon on Twitter showed unfavorable results for the Common Core learning standards. For instance, with 2,480 votes in, 78 percent of respondents had answered one question by choosing the option that the Common Core will "hinder public education." Thirteen percent said the Common Core would "improve public education."

Additionally, 84 percent of 2,566 respondents said parents in their school district have "generally unfavorable" sentiment toward the Common Core.

The School Boards Association generally supports the Common Core.

After the poll was taken down, some opponents of the Common Core took to Twitter to ask what happened. Several suggested the poll was killed because it showed growing hostility to the standards.

Albert said the School Boards Association would not seek to identify school board members who shared the link to the poll.

"It really doesn't matter to us," he said.

The association had done a few previous pulse polls related to the Common Core.

A poll done in July found that 57 percent of respondents agreed that their board had been trained to understand its role in implementing the Common Core. Thirty-one percent disagreed.

A poll done in August 2013 asked members whether their district had sufficient resources to provide remedial instruction to students who did not hit state targets on Common Core-related tests. Seventy-three percent said they were concerned about resources.

Twitter: @garysternNY