Dihydrogen Monoxide and the NCLB

There's a joke--a hoax, really--circling about the Internet, codified in countless professional-looking websites, about a mysterious and dangerous chemical compound called "dihydrogen monoxide." It's described in the most dire terms imaginable, "colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year," etc. One city in California almost passed a city ordinance banning it until they realized....dihydrogen monoxide is water!

It's all in how you describe something.

The latest dihydrogen monoxide-type scam has been perpetrated by--who else?--ETS, the testing mega-organization formerly known as the "Educational Testing Service." ETS surveyed a large number of Americans about the NCLB and found a roughly even split in favor of and opposed to renewal of the program. Not satisfied, they reworded the survey questions, throwing about vague terms like "standards" and "accountability" and "flexibility," apparently apple-pie terms for the survey respondents, and the second time around concluded that a strong majority of Americans support the law's renewal and also that most Americans don't really understand the law. "Despite the American public’s clear lack of knowledge about the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the strong misgivings of teachers and school
administrators have about the legislation [sic], the public and public school teachers and administrators strongly support reauthorization" ("Standards, Accountability and Flexibility:
Americans Speak on No Child Left Behind Reauthorization").
The irony of a majority of people supporting something they don't understand is apparently lost on ETS.

Nowhere on the ETS site can I find the actual before and after questions of the surveys, but let me postulate another survey question:

"In 2002 Congress passed, and the President signed, a major educational reform package. The effects of this package have been:

1. the elimination of naps for kindergartners in many schools
2. the elimination of recess for many elementary school children
3. the exodus of many discouraged teachers
4. the imposition of simple-minded true-false and multiple choice tests at almost every level of school
5. the elimination of teaching the arts, music, social studies, and other subjects no longer tested for
6. wholesale "teaching to the test" instead of wide-ranging instruction in interesting subjects
7. logjams of students stuck in the ninth grade year after year so they won't have to take the 10th grade achievement tests and possibly embarrass the school systems
8. students being forced out of school before they can take--and possibly fail--the tests
9. schools lowering standards so more of their students will pass the tests
10. students who have not yet learned to speak English well (like every one of our ancestors) are forced to take all their math, science, and other courses in English, thus guaranteeing they will fail
11. opposition by over 3/4 of teachers and school administrators--the trained professionals who know more about education than any politician
12. schools which have the highest failure rates and presumably need the most help are instead penalized by having their federal aid funds drastically cut

Should this law be renewed?"

How do you think a majority of Americans will feel about the NCLB when they know these truths and see the sugar-coated and highly-spun Washington-speak selling of the NCLB for what it is?

"To Know NCLB Is to Like It, ETS Poll Finds," trumpets Education Week. To know dihydrogen monoxide is to ban it, they may as well have written.