The Newsroom’s View of Education Reform
Surprise! The press paints a distorted picture
Imagine that you’re a casual follower of the education policy debate. You read the major national outlets—theNew York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today—and you might come across national Associated Press (AP) stories in your local paper or online news aggregator, too. What would be your view of American education, circa 2011?
In a nutshell: cheating is rampant, national test scores are abysmal, school policy is set in Washington, and teacher tenure is on its last legs. That’s the image implied by the 250-odd education stories published by leading news organizations last year, according to an analysis my team and I did for Education Next. Let us take a closer look.
As declared by the press, 2011 was “the year of the cheating scandal.” (See Greg Toppo’s year-end story in USA Today, “Schools flunked inquiries into suspicious scores in 2011,” or Dorie Turner’s AP roundup, “2011 marred by test cheating scandals across U.S.”) And sure enough, the media covered the story extensively, with 18 articles published by the national outlets (see Figure 1).And how could they resist?