Today marks the release of the second half of the PACE/USC Rossier poll on education, our annual barometer on all things education policy in California [1]. This half focuses on two issues near and dear to my heart: Common Core and testing. Over the coming days and weeks I’ll be parsing out some interesting tidbits I’ve uncovered in analyzing results from this year’s poll.

The first finding worth mentioning has to do with Common Core support and knowledge. We’ve all read arguments like “The more people know about Common Core, the less they like it”. For instance, we see that claim from NPR, Republican legislators, and hackish tea party faux-news sites. This claim is generally based on the finding from several polls that people who say they know more about the standards are less likely to support it (or more generally, the trend that reported knowledge has increased over time, as has opposition). It turns out, however, that this may not be as true as you think.

To test knowledge of Common Core, we first asked people to tell us how much they know about the Common Core (a lot, some, a little, nothing at all). Then, we asked them a series of factual and opinion questions about the standards, to test whether they really did know as much as they said they did. The results were quite illuminating.

It turns out that people who said they knew a lot about Common Core were actually the most likely group to report misconceptions about the standards, and the group that had the highest level of net misconceptions (misconceptions – correct conceptions). For instance, 51.5% of people who said they knew “a lot” about Common Core, incorrectly said it was false that Common Core included only math and ELA standards. In contrast, just 31.7% of this group correctly answered this statement (for a net misconception index of -20). For people who only reported knowing a little about the standards, their net misconceptions were just -11 (33% misconception, 22% correct conception).

Another area on which Common Core-“knowledgable” people were more likely to be incorrect was in agreeing that Common Core required more testing than previous state standards. 57% of this group wrongly said this was true, while just 31% correctly said it was false (net misconceptions -26). All groups had net misconceptions on this item, but the margin was -19 for the “some” knowledge group, -16 for the “a little” group, and -11 for the “none” group.

In terms of raw proportions of misinformed individuals, the “a lot” of knowledge group is also the most misinformed group about the Obama administration’s role in creating the standards and the federal government’s role in requiring adoption.

In short, yes, individuals who say they know more about the standards are less likely to support the standards. But, as it turns out, that’s not because they actually know more (they don’t). Rather, it’s likely because they “know” things that are false and that are almost certainly driving their opposition.

So the next time you see someone claiming that “the more people know about Common Core, the less they like it,” feel free to correct them.

[1] Part 1 of this year’s poll was already released–it focused on Local Control Funding and overall attitudes toward education in California. You can read more about it here.