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.

Counting and comparing school performance: an analysis of media coverage of PISA in Australia, 2000–2014

“…These studies were completed as part of the Know&Pol project (2006-2011) that investigated the reception of PISA in these countries. Other studies reviewed newspapers in Turkey (Gür, Çelik, & Özoğlu, 2012); Norway (Elstad, 2012); the United States (Stack, 2007); Canada (Stack, 2006); Japan (Takayama, 2008(Takayama, , 2010; and Israel (Yemini & Gordon, 2015). Additionally, some studies developed comparative accounts of PISA in the media.…”

“…At times, this has included 'false leaks' and 'erroneous information' (Mons & Pons, 2009, p. 84) that privileged certain discourses about PISA results in particular countries and framed public understandings in particular ways. For example, discourses of 'crisis' were often associated with media constructions of PISA performance (Mons & Pons, 2009;Stack, 2006Stack, , 2007Takayama, 2008Takayama, , 2010Takayama et al, 2013;Waldow et al, 2014), creating a 'public outcry' over the performance of national education systems (Yemini & Gordon, 2015). Media coverage was found to peak in certain countries at times of perceived crisis.…”

An Opportunity to Better Understand Schooling: The Growing Presence of Pisa in the Americas*

“…However, Stack (2006Stack ( , 2007 observed that, in Canada and in the United States, the issue is not the statistics per se but how they are interpreted. The statistics provide a simple mechanism of appearing to report reality, which are strengthened with the addition of stories and quotes that add context and some validity to the numbers (Stack, 2007). This coverage-although of general interest-is augmented by policy ideas and changes in Latin America that may have resulted from PISA (e.g.…”

Fifteen years of research on PISA effects on education governance: A critical review

“…Then, scholars paid more attention to the influence of Asian models in various countries like Australia, England or Germany (Lingard & Sellar, 2013a;Waldow, Takayama, & Sung, 2014), the circulation of models at work within the European education space (R€ onnberg, 2015) or the export strategies of top performers like Finland (Schatz, 2015). The role of the media was decisive in this process and studied in some countries like Canada (Stack, 2006(Stack, , 2007. Nancy Green Saraisky (2016) even argues that media content analysis is a particularly fruitful method to understand the way in which ideas and global trends influence national education policy on the ground.…”