Representing School Success and Failure: Media Coverage of International Tests

Abstract

It is through the media that audiences come to learn about the apparent successes and failure of the education system. Despite this power, the connection of the media to educational leadership and policy making is often given little attention in determining the forces at play in evaluating what happens in schools. Using a critical discourse analysis of media coverage concerning the 1999 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the 2000 and 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the author argues that the media interpreted these test results in concert with business and electoral elites as a ‘failure of marginalized students,’ rather than a failure of society to address systemic discrimination. The media coverage of such failures presents solutions provided by business and government as common sense. Consequently, alternative framings, for example, as to what a successful education system would look like to people who are judged school failures based on the tests are never sought. There is also no discussion of the ways in which the PISA and TIMSS tests are constructed to favor the knowledge of dominant interests and ignore that which is outside this realm.