All week long, you’ve heard about how states are doing on education. Now it’s the president’s turn to be graded, the Huffington Post reports. HuffPost/YouGov asked the American public what they thought about Obama’s performance in the education arena. And they think he’s doing fine. First, HuffPost/YouGov this week asked a representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults, Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama has handled the issue of education? Thirty-nine percent indicated they approve, 33 percent said they disapproved, and 28 percent weren’t sure. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minute 3.8 percentage points. What does this mean?
“To have both approval and disapproval of Obama under 40 percent suggests to me that most people haven’t thought much about Obama in terms of education and don’t associate him with any major education initiatives,” Emily Swanson, HuffPost’s polling director, tells me (over gchat). “More people approve than disapprove, which probably means that most people don’t have any strong negative feelings, but right now people probably don’t consider Obama to be a leader on education initiatives.”