Yesterday, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) – which brings you the GRE, SAT, AP, and numerous other dreaded exams – released results of a survey supposedly showing that “Americans say ‘yes’” to reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The ETS pollsters reached this conclusion despite finding that more respondents opposed NCLB than supported it. How’s that possible? It takes a little prodding.

The survey’s first major finding is actually that most people – more than half – report knowing very little about the massive No Child Left Behind Act. It also finds that a plurality dislikes the law, with 43 percent opposing it and only 41 percent backing NCLB. But an accurate snapshot of public knowledge and opinion apparently wasn’t what ETS was after. No, what they wanted to know was what people thought about the law after they were offered a brief – and very positive – description of NCLB:

The No Child Left Behind Act provides federal funds for school districts with poor children in order to close achievement gaps. It also requires states to set standards for education and to test students each year to determine whether the standards are being met by all students. In addition, No Child Left Behind provides funding to help teachers become highly qualified. It also provides additional funding and prescribes consequences to schools that fail to achieve academic targets set by their state.

What a shock! After respondents got that description, support for the law rose to 56 percent. Sort of like if the description were “NCLB fulfills champagne wishes and caviar dreams for every student in America.” I mean, who is going to oppose “highly qualified” teachers, closing achievement gaps, and helping poor children? If anything, it’s a testament to how disliked NCLB truly is that the description only boosted support by 15 points. And imagine how low support might have dropped had ETS offered a little balance by, say, noting that NCLB has caused many states to lower their standards, and has produced no discernable increase in academic achievement despite boosting federal education spending by billions of dollars. Yet one more example of why you should never trust public opinion polls.