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Representing School Success and Failure: Media Coverage of International

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Article  in  Policy Futures in Education · March 2007

DOI: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.100

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Policy Futures in Education, Volume 5, Number 1, 2007 doi:10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.100

Representing School Success and Failure:

media coverage of international tests

MICHELLE STACK
University of British Columbia, Canada

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.

Introduction
‘This is a national security issue.’ This statement, made by Republican, Sherwood Boehlert, two
months after 9/11, is in reference to the United States’ performance on the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) – a test given to 15 year-olds in over 30 countries (Schouten, November 13,
2001). I start with this quote because it indicates how the discourse of testing is embedded in other
discourses, such as security. Testing as a measure of a person’s knowledge and a system’s
performance has a long history in the United States. Serafini (2002) argues that ‘assessment as
measurement’ is part of a factory model of schooling that is in keeping with a modernist
philosophy. Kohn argues that standardized tests tell us more about household income than
anything else, given the connection between income and test scores (2000). Nezavdal (2003)
maintains that testing is an integral part of the ‘basic skills and accountability rhetoric of global
competitiveness’ (p. 6).
I do not subscribe to the notion that the media and other elites only present one discourse about
education; however, in American education, there is a discourse around the use of international
testing as an objective measure of success and failure which is embedded in hegemonic
understandings of race, gender, class and a hierarchy of nations that is entrenched in capitalistic
notions of success and failure. This discourse is exceptionally stable across political parties and
media outlets.
In this case study I draw mostly on critical discourse analysis. Discourse in the Foucauldian
sense refers to a world that is not simply present to be talked about. Instead it is through discourse
that the world is brought into existence. There are unspoken rules about what can be spoken and

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what cannot. A primary component of critical discourse analysis is an understanding of the

connection between texts and society/culture as mediated by discourse practices (Fairclough,
1998). Critical discourse analysts attempt to make the implicit explicit and in so doing to uncover
how discourse functions to make that which is based in ideology appear neutral and
commonsensical. Part of this process is an examination of intertexuality. As Jørgensen & Phillips
(2002) point out, ‘Through analysis of intertextuality, one can investigate both the reproduction of
discourses whereby no new elements are introduced and discursive change through new
combinations of discourse’ (p. 7).The media coverage about the PISA also provides an opportunity
to examine interdiscursivity, which ‘occurs when different discourses and genres are articulated
together in a communicative event’ (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 73). Critical discourse analysis
examines how discourse is involved in creating and recreating social structures as well as reflecting
them. It sees discourse not as something that is merely in people’s mind but embedded in social
practice that is part of the real, material world.
I examined news clips concerning the 2000 and 2003 OECD’s PISA and the 1999 Trends in
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test. I used the Lexis-Nexis database to locate eight articles
from national and widely distributed statewide papers. I also analyzed 36 articles from national and
international wire services, many of which appeared in papers of record, such as the New York Times
and the LA Times. The news pieces included were in papers captured under ‘major papers’ in the
Lexis-Nexis database and included ‘papers of record’, such as the New York Times (see Table I).

Newspaper/Wire service Brief news News articles Editorials or

articles (includes features) opinion pieces
Associated Press 41
1 ; 43
2
Reuters News Service 4
Gannett News Service 1
Boston Herald 1
Cox News Service 1
4
Scripps Howard News Service 1
Washington Times 2 1
New York Times 1 1
The Washington Post 1
5
Knight Rider News Service 1 16 17
USA Today 1
Boston Herald 1
Total 6 16 6
1
Appeared: Newsday
2
Appeared: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Los Angeles Times
3
Appeared: New York Times
4
Appeared: Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
5
Appeared: The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Jose Mercury News,
Miami Herald, The Houston Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and
Saint Paul Pioneer Press (eight days later)
6
Appeared: The Philadelphia Inquiry
7
Appeared: San Jose Mercury News

Table I. Summary of articles analyzed.

I examined press releases from the federal Department of Education in order to ascertain how
media interpreted information from government about test results. Some of the media coverage
did mention disparities between rich and poor or boys and girls or African-Americans and
Hispanics as compared to Whites. I analyzed press releases and executive summaries from national
organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) and the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) to ascertain whether there was
easily accessible material that the media might have used to provide a different narrative from the
one they did. I found that neither of these organizations had press releases concerning the PISA or
TIMSS results, but that each had current press releases, reports and executive summaries about
educational inequality and proposed solutions.

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Conceptual Framework: constructing truth through numbers and official sources

This study touches on three issues. The first addresses how test scores are interpreted through
statistics to create a mystique from which the press creates a reality.
As Hacking (1981) argues, social statistics are a new technology of power. Statistics are
presented as an objective measure of progress, yet who decides what a child ought to learn is based
in power relations. Poovey argues:
As a discourse that claims a transparent relation to the objects it represents, statistical
representation masks the meanings it does produce, at the same time as it puts those
meanings into play. Largely though not exclusively an effect of the categories by which
statistical representation organizes materials, these meanings are constructed before the
statistics are compiled; they then radiate from the starkest tables. (Cited in Watts, 2003,
p. 46)
Statistics provide the media with a simple mechanism of merely reporting reality, which is made
into a story with the use of emotional anecdotes and/or expert quotes that lend credibility to the
numbers. As Ball (1990, p. 18) argues, ‘Meanings thus arise not from language but from
institutional practices, from power relations, from social position. Words and concepts change their
meanings and their effects as they are deployed within different discourses.’ Therefore, the way in
which tests are interpreted and the solutions proposed based on these interpretations are
dependent on which institutions and power relations are given primacy in this process.
The second issue addressed in this study involves the mechanisms – such as press releases, press
conferences – through which information is constructed and reconstructed by and for the media,
and the convergence of discourses that form a rhetoric about economic competitiveness as linked
to equality and justice. Tuchman (1983) found that the news media relies on framing from
government and other influential policy actors and that news is often based on official press
releases. Emphasis on timeliness in the news means that news reports are episodic rather than
analytical. Press releases and press conferences are regulative mechanisms, which shape public
consciousness over the meaning of testing and education. Robert Entman (1993) argues that what
issues get discussed is dependent on the framing the media uses: ‘many of the framing devices can
appear as “natural”, unremarkable choices of words or language’ (Entman, 1991, p. 6). In other
words, if schooling is primarily framed as the key to global competitiveness, how testing and
achievement are discussed will be different than if schooling is framed as an institution that
promotes equity and citizenship. Entman demonstrates how frames diagnose problems, diagnose
causes, make moral judgements and suggest remedies The media determines the public framing of
discourses and thus plays a central role in determining the issues that are debated and ultimately
how these issues are interpreted by policy makers and the public. For example, if schooling is
primarily framed as the key to global competitiveness, how testing and achievement are discussed
will be different than if schooling is framed as an institution that promotes equity and citizenship.
The final issue I will explore involves the representation of contested voices. It is the
reproductive power of media that gives it such force in the policy-making process. The media often
defines which knowledge (and audience) is of most worth, and in doing so doing sets up the
conditions for certain ‘truth claims’ and ‘regimes of truth’ to circulate. Consequently, it is not a
simple matter of contacting the media and providing them with an alternative framing to their
conservative ideology. It is an ideology that maintains a framework in which individual and
community pathology and individual wrongdoing is at the heart of all that is wrong in a capitalist
society (Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Alterman, 2003). Within this framework, oppressed groups are
occasionally given ‘voice.’ However, as Corson (1995) argued, more voices are being heard in
postmodern society, but that does not mean that these voices have influence on power structures.

Mapping the Relationship between Education and the Media

The international literature contains a small but growing body of research examining the role of
the media in educational leadership and the creation and implementation of educational policy
(Kenway, 1990; Wallace, 1993; Thomas, 2002; Blackmore & Thorpe, 2003; Thomson, 2004; Stack &
Kelly, 2006). All these authors point to a neo-liberal media discourse that pervades discussion of

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education. Berliner & Biddle (1995) document how the media entrenches assumptions that the
American education system is failing and getting worse, but that it can easily be fixed by common-
sense federal educational policy.
In her analysis of how the media covered education in the 2000 American federal election,
Gerstl-Pepin (2002) uses Habermas’s notion of the public sphere to argue that the media provides a
‘thin public’ in which opposing viewpoints are represented but there is no analysis or dialogue:
political dialogue becomes akin to a horse race (Gerstl-Pepin, 2002). The media relies mostly on
candidates, but also on reporters and political analysts, to explain complex educational problems.
The result is that issues such as testing are reduced to either/or debates (Gerstl-Pepin, 2002, p. 43).
Blackmore & Thorpe (2003) document how the Kennett state government in Australia
effectively used the media to create policy problems and to recommend advice as to their logical
solutions (p. 583). The Government stated that the system was in crisis and, as it had been in the
USA, the solution was to provide parents with choice and to institute more standardized testing.
Brantlinger (2004) argues that ‘corporate control of the media results in public expenditures being
“the problem” and business and unregulated free markets being “the answer,” so business-oriented
measures are recommended to solve their versions of educational and national problems.’
Thomas (2002) conducted a critical discourse analysis of an interim report about education in
Australia and found that the media phrased the invitation to participate in a survey in a manner
that focused on the failures of the education system. For example, the survey asked, ‘What
improvements could be made?’ As Thomas points out, the question assumes the need for
improvements. Stories resulting from the survey focused on personal stories of families dissatisfied
with the system. Hence, statistics were used to ‘objectively’ demonstrate a decline in standards, and
personal narrative to explicate what the ‘truth’ meant for real people. Thomas also found that a
dichotomy was constructed between parents who cared about their children’s apparently declining
schools and teachers who were protecting their turf. Finally, she found that the media, like
government, represented private schools as having higher standards than public schools.
MacMillan (2002) found that a meta-narrative that she terms ‘a sign of the times’ is constructed
based on recurring themes in tabloid stories about low standards, failing schools and poor discipline
(p. 28) and a subsequent focus on who should be held responsible. ‘Sign of the times’ stories come
to stand for moral and social decline. All fall into what MacMillan (2002) terms ‘Assigning blame in
a no-blame society’ (p. 35). Within this society, the blame is not on government. The blame lies
with teachers and families that foster a ‘no-blame’ attitude and therefore produce a society in which
the mantra is ‘no-blame, no-shame’ (p. 35). As I hope to demonstrate in this article, coverage of
TIMSS and the PISA also tended to focus on ‘bad’ teachers and schools, rather than on issues of
funding and systemic discrimination.

The Stories
Van Dijk (1988) explains that news stories are not chronological but ordered according to news
values. In other words, articles do not start with the origin of a problem and move on to its history
and end with the current situation. Instead, the current situation is usually the start and focus of the
story while the context and history is secondary. The headline captures the dominant framing of a
story, whereas the lead sentence is a micro-story even when a longer story follows (Fairclough,
1998). The majority of the stories originate from a wire service. Patterson (1998) found that
journalists working for such organizations were more concerned with speed than developing
relationships with groups that might offer background or contradictory views. Mancini (1993)
found that the increasing frequency of news led to a more inward relationship between Italian
journalists and political elites. Manning (2001) concludes that groups on the outside have a harder
time getting in as journalists scramble for another quick story, rather than working towards
investigative pieces.
The TIMSS and the PISA are framed as indicators of global competitiveness and hence the
majority of the headlines about the TIMSS and the PISA are focused on the United States’ standing
in relation to the world. The media coverage about the 1999 TIMSS test spans from December
2000 to November 28, 2001. Six of the TIMSS articles were written when the Clinton
administration was still in power. The government press release headline states: ‘U.S. Eighth

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Graders above International Average in Math, Science’ (US Department of Education, December 5,
2000). The Associated Press and Associated Press Online wrote three stories with the headlines,
‘U.S. trails nations in science, math’ (McQueen, December 5, 2000a), ‘U.S. students improve, but
still trail other nations in science, math tests (December 5, 2000b), and ‘Massachusetts students
outscore international score in test’. Cox News Service announced, ‘U.S. Eighth Graders Tie for
15th Place in Science and Math’ (Mollison, December 5, 2000), the San Jose Mercury News
announced, ‘Latest Test Results Show U.S. Students Remain Mediocre’ (Jacobs, December 7, 2000,
B11), and Scripps Howard News Service has the rather bland headline of, ‘Math and Science: strong
focus on content needed’ (January 1, 2001).
These articles, written when Clinton was in power, gave some space for an upbeat discourse
about progress based on increased test scores from the TIMSS test in 1995 to the TIMSS test in
1999. In an Associated Press article, Riley, Clinton’s education secretary, is quoted: ‘American
students continue to learn,’ Riley said, ‘but their peers in some other nations have been learning at
a faster rate (McQueen, ‘US Students Improve,’ December 5, 2000b). In other words, the
Department does not deny the mediocrity of the test results. However, it defends them as a valid
measure of the educational system as compared to the rest of the world, but it sets the results
within a framework of improvement rather than crisis. However, Riley’s interpretation, in this and
other articles, is contested. In a Cox News Service article, former senator and astronaut, John
Glenn, comments that, ‘we’d likely do a whole lot better in these measurements if we had qualified
teachers’ (Mollison, December 5, 2000). Glenn appears to be part of an oppositional discourse.
Nevertheless, his comments, like those of government, are within a dominant corporatist discourse
of education in which failings and successes of the education system are framed within a
framework of competitiveness and standardization.
On February 28, 2001, President Bush presented his first budget, the first point of which pertains
to education. He stated that the budget ‘will revitalize our public schools by testing for
achievement, rewarding schools that succeed, and giving more flexibility to parents of children in
schools that persistently fail.’ In his speech, he made reference to high school seniors trailing in
international math tests (US Department of Education, February 28, 2001). Headlines written from
April 2001 on report the TIMSS as being one of many tests results that demonstrate the need for
radical change. For example, Gannett News Service headlines with, ‘If U.S. Schools are So Weak,
Why are We No. 1?’ (Schouten, November 13, 2001). Since it is common sense that America is No.
1, it is not explained why or how America is No. 1.
The first media coverage about the PISA results occurred on the same day that the Federal
Department of Education issued a press release with the headline, ‘U.S. Students Average among
International Peers: U.S. 15-year-olds’ abilities to apply learning to “real world” examined in new
32-nation study’ (December 4, 2001). For the most part, media headlines took their lead from the
government release. A Reuters News Services article tells readers that ‘Students in Finland, Japan and
Korea at Top of Class (Pleming, December 4, 2001); another New York Times headline states, ‘US
Students Prove Middling on a 32-nation Test’ (Schemo, December 5, 2001, A25); and the
Washington Times declares, ‘Lagging Scores of U.S. Students Seems Worrisome’ (Wetzstein,
December 27, 2001, A2). An article that was remarkably similar to the one covered by the
Associated Press, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, told
readers, ‘Average Scores for U.S. 15-Year-Olds’ (Theimer, December 4, 2001). A second Associated
Press article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times announced, ‘U.S. Students on Par with Peer
Nations’ (Groves, December 4, 2001, A14).
News narratives include elements such as plot, characters, genres, and rhetorical devices as well
as an ideological vision and journalistic practices (Jacobs, 2000, p. 10). Whatever the narrative,
official players have a better chance of playing a leading role, given their ability to provide the news
media with information that is packaged in a way that makes it immediately useful. Regardless of
the lead, all the articles about the state of education focused on either Barry McGaw, an official
from the OECD, or the Secretary of Education, or a prominent member of the business
community stating the problem and usually proposing a solution.
From February 2001 on, Rodney Paige, Bush’s new Federal Education secretary, is the
dominant source. Paige cites the TIMSS and other results to demonstrate that the American
education system needs radical change. He is backed up by business executives who insist that the

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United States is losing its competitive advantages. Paige was quoted repeatedly as saying,
‘Unfortunately we are average across the board compared to other industrialized nations in the
global economy: these countries are our competitors – average is not good enough for American
kids (Groves, December 4, 2001, A14). There is an assumption that average might be good enough
for other countries, but not for a country that is the world’s superpower.
Paige goes on to talk about Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) plan and how this plan will
ensure that children receive more practice with standardized tests and that children can leave low-
performing schools for high-performing ones. Paige’s implication, that the poor test results are a
result of a lack of testing in schools and a lack of school choice, is not challenged. Much of the
media reporting about the PISA results was based on the discursive practices of the market –
consumer choice as a means to improve the nation’s ability to compete. This mirrored the
Government’s education agenda. Nowhere is Paige challenged to show evidence for how the
Government’s proposed market reforms might improve the education system or the educational
lives of marginalized students. Nowhere is it asked if countries that have implemented the kind of
policy that the Government is proposing do better in the test. Do the children have a richer
educational experience?
In 2003, the United States again scored in the middle on the PISA. However, the new headlines
use a discourse of cost-effectiveness as well as of competition. The US Department of Education
headline, ‘International Education Report: U.S. students are average despite leading education
investment, U.S. trailing many industrialized nations’ (September 16, 2003), introduces this dual
discourse. Similarly, a Boston Herald editorial piece announced, ‘Money can’t buy the best ed
system’ (September 21, 2003, A47). It led, ‘The news from the schoolhouse is running from bad to
worse. First, the bad news: American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and
Asian countries in reading, math and science. We’re even trailing France’. One wonders if being
behind France would have been so alarming and disquieting to the media prior to the Iraq war and
the subsequent disagreements on foreign policy between the USA and France.
An editorial in the Washington Times (a right-wing and popular paper, controlled by the
Unification Church) stated, ‘Throwing Money at School Frauds: collapse of standards is not a
question of cash’ (Fields, September 22, 2003, A23); and in an article in the national section, the
Washington Times warned readers, ‘American Students Found Trailing Foreign Teenagers’
(Archibald, September 17, 2003, A10). These stories led with more information as to how the USA
was spending ample resources but still trailing other nations. There are two narratives that are
pivotal throughout the 2003 coverage. The first narrative is that the United States’ economy makes
it strong and schools have a key role to play to ensure the proper education of the next generation
of economically sufficient consumers. The second narrative is that when it comes to education it is
not money that is needed but harder working teachers and principals. There is no analysis of how
funding might be calculated in different countries or the supports and services outside of the school
budget, such as after-school care and tutoring provided in other countries. Also absent is any
analysis aside from poor teachers and principals as to why the USA scores in the middle and what it
would mean to their economy and education system if they had the highest score. Would it mean
that they would have a stronger economy, a better education system?
In 2003 Paige continues to be quoted, but added are gurus such as Chester Finn, former US
Secretary of Education, a well-known conservative education critic, and business leaders who focus
on the necessity of raising the standards to ensure that the USA can compete with the rest of the
world. The media coverage follows the framing provided by the Federal Department of Education,
which emphasizes that the USA is one of the top spenders on education yet is getting average
results. The answer is faithful adherence to No Child Left Behind, including better teachers and
more testing.

Representation of Equity
Class, race and gender are recurring issues in media coverage. These issues are framed within the
discourse of international competition, standards, and teacher and personal deficits. There is a
mobilization of legitimate discourses, including government, business and academic, which create
a common sense that forms what Foucault termed a dividing discourse (Watts, 2003). Through this

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process people are divided into distinct categories and their success or failure is ascribed to their
membership in these categories.

Race
Miles (1989) argues that the practice of dividing people in ways that assign them ‘natural’
characteristics and attributes is central to maintaining racist discourse:
Democratic racism arises when racist beliefs and behaviors remain deeply embedded in
‘democratic’ societies. Obfuscations and justifications are deployed to demonstrate
continuing faith in egalitarian ideals, even while many individuals, groups, and institutions
continue to engage in systemic racist practices that serve to undermine those ideals. (Cited in
Henry & Tator, 2002, p. 23)
None of the articles about the TIMSS mentioned racialized minorities. A Knight Ridder/Tribune
News Service article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer and written by Mezzacappa does,
however, make reference to advocates who think that Bush’s policies will not close the
achievement gap for poor and minority children. Two articles focusing on the 2000 PISA state that
African-American and Hispanic children scored lower than all other groups including American
Indians and Asians. In both articles, this information was presented as a short bullet with no context
as to why they scored lower. What does this mean? Are Hispanics and African-Americans less
academic? Does it mean that racism is not an issue since other minorities did as well as White
Americans? The reasons for the lower scores are not explained. Instead, space is given to plans for
improving test scores. There is a common sense that the plans will improve education for all.
A month prior to the media coverage about the 2000 PISA, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) announced a call for action to Rodney Paige, and
secretaries of education for all states, colleges and universities. The NAACP call went into detail
regarding the resource disparity and racism in schools that were at the root of poorer success rates.
This call was not mentioned in any of the media coverage.
In 2003, the Americans again score in the middle on the PISA test, and again minor attention is
given to the results of African-Americans and Hispanics, who are reported to score lower than any
other group. In this group of articles, this and other school failings are blamed on poor teaching.
The same voices that dominated the media coverage about the TIMSS and the 2000 PISA dominate
once again. There is no voice given to groups such as the NAACP, which, at the time of the
coverage around the 2003 PISA, were holding national hearings around issues of educational
inequity.

Gender
The issue of girls scoring better than boys was briefly mentioned in coverage of the 2000 PISA but
is a prominent theme in the 2003 coverage and originates with one story that appears in three
Knight Ridder publications – the Miami Herald, the San Jose Mercury News and the Saint Paul Pioneer
Press (Potrikus, 2003a, b, c) as well as the Houston Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the San
Diego Union-Tribune (Potrikus, 2003d, e). Headlines from these publications include: ‘Girls are
Better Students, Research Shows: a Paris think tank assesses that girls have surpassed boys in
reading skill and are more likely to graduate from college’ (Potrikus, September 20, 2003a, A8).
In five articles about the 2001 PISA, it is stated that girls did better in reading but that there was
no difference between boys and girls in math and science. In 2003, gender takes center stage.
McGaw is again quoted frequently. He blames ‘obstinacy’ especially among lower-income boys as
the problem (Potrikus, September 28, 2003c, A5). A teacher, Kaye Peters, is quoted. Her theory is
that girls are better able to negotiate the tension between academic excellence and peer pressure
than are boys. Also quoted is sociologist Andrew Hacker, who states that culture is to blame for the
failing performance of boys. The take-home message is that low-income boys are macho, obstinate,
and hence do less well than girls. It appears boys can be separated into those who are poor and
obstinate and those who are affluent and compliant, but girls are a homogeneous group who are
doing well. What is most interesting is that the convergence of discourses – the teacher, the

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academic, and the senior policy analysts – all come with different backgrounds but the voices
function to play a part in the construction of social reality. Absent are alternative representations of
the boys versus girls debate.
Indeed, research has demonstrated that working-class and racialized minority boys are under-
represented in higher education, but so too are girls from these backgrounds. However, minority
youth, especially boys, have been both invisible and hyper-visible. In many policy discussions
concern is focused on working-class white boys (Archer, 2003), and when minority youth are
considered it is within a dominant paradigm that views them as culturally and socially bereft of the
proper aptitudes and attitudes (Archer, 2003).
As in the coverage in 2001, readers are not told how large the gap is between boys and girls, but
the problem is presented as dire. There is no questioning as to how it was that, while girls did
better in reading but the same in math and science in 2000, they were ahead to such a degree as to
cause alarm that boys were failing in 2003. The focus on boys as victims of a system apparently
catering to girls has been critiqued by feminists (Archer, 2003) who point to the classist and racist
nature of the ‘masculinity in crisis’ debate that sidelines racism, sexism and class and instead blames
the changing roles of women as pathological for men. There is no evidence that the notion of boys
in crisis is contested. Instead the test results are used to yet again prove that masculinity is indeed in
crisis.

Class
Only one article out of nine stories about the TIMSS mentioned differences based on socio-
economic status. However, in six out of eight of the articles about the 2000 PISA, socio-economic
standing is mentioned, but it is presented as something that can be overcome. An Associated Press
article in the Los Angeles Times quotes Barry McGaw, who states, ‘The reason the U.S. is average, on
average, is that many people do badly. What the U.S. needs to do is pull up the bottom. You don’t
have to sacrifice quality to get equality’ (Theimer, December 4, 2001).
In a Reuters article that appeared in the New York Times, McGaw states that ‘where there was a
high degree of segregation along socio-economic lines, students tended to do worse’ (Pleming,
December 4, 2001). McGaw seems to be stating that this is a major issue in the scores. However, in
another article in the same paper, McGaw states that children in Finland and some other countries
can succeed despite poverty and instability at home. Class stratification is neutralized. Class is seen
as homogeneous in all situations and hence the assumption is made that the fact that one education
system is effective and another is not points not to socio-economic issues but to issues of pedagogy
and motivation. Missing in this picture is Finland’s extensive subsidized day care, social and health
care services that many American children do not receive. There is no mention of how Bush’s new
plan might address this gap. Through focusing on the grand narrative of the American meritocracy
the Government’s interpretation of the test scores becomes part of political rhetoric that surrounds
efforts at nation building. The test demonstrates that what matters is not class, but the effort of
teachers and students.
Media coverage of PISA results focuses less on socio-economic issues in 2003 than in 2001,
despite the continued child poverty in the United States and the easily accessible, succinct research
indicating the connection between socio-economic status and access to academic opportunities.
Instead the focus is on bad teachers and teaching methods. By sticking with official parameters, the
media coverage naturalizes inequality.

Conclusion
It is through the media that people come to know education beyond their personal experience with
schools. However, it is not only educational leaders and policy elites convincing the large middle
class of what needs to happen in the education system. It is also a matter of elites contesting or
collaborating on the meaning of education through the media. In this article, I demonstrated how
business and government both agreed and disagreed with what the test meant to the future of the
American economy. It is through the media that education is framed as an engine of global
competitiveness, producer of good citizens and good consumers. There is, of course, variation in

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what the media reports: however, around testing there is a consistent discourse in which test
results come to stand for the state of American education and global strength. This discourse affects
what is taught, how it is taught and how the success and failure of students, teachers and school
leaders is judged. Throughout the production process issues around testing are intertextually and
interdiscursively updated to naturalize inequality and a nation-building discourse in which the
United States is logically at the top of the heap.
The headlines and leads concerning all three tests demonstrate the power of government and
business to frame a story about what a good education is, and the importance of numbers to
demonstrate the veracity of the story. The headlines do not state that the data are based on a single
test. Rather, they authoritatively proclaim that US students are in the middle and girls are ahead.
The headlines, based on numbers, establish these facts as an objective measure of which systems
are the best and who performs best. Indeed, none of the headlines or leads suggests contestation,
but a most certain reality.
There is current disagreement about high-stakes testing, but the reporting of standardized
testing as a measure of teachers’ and students’ academic competence is a common political and
journalistic strategy. Therefore, while there are differences in how elites frame test results, there is
no contestation as to the efficacy of the PISA and the TIMSS as useful and accurate measures of
why schools are performing, or not performing, up to the expectation of elites. Both Democrats
and Republicans frame their discourse about schools within both competitiveness and equality –
schools where those who work are rewarded – where no child is left behind.
The problem with the PISA and TIMSS is twofold. What is tested is based within a hegemonic
framework in which a fabrication of consensus has been created. There is no discussion about who
determines what knowledge is important enough to be tested in over 30 countries, or how the test
results are interpreted. Furthermore, racial, class and gender differences are explained by locating
the blame on community pathology, rather than societal injustice. An alternative framing would
include the voices of those who are discriminated against within schools and the larger society,
rather than focusing entirely on the dominant discourse in which economically disadvantaged and
racialized groups are deemed to be failures. More research is needed to further explore how
educational test results are used to promote and protect national narratives around competition,
privatization and security.

Acknowledgement
Thank you to the Hampton Research Fund for providing support for this research. Thank you to
André Mazawi for reading an earlier draft of this article.

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MICHELLE STACK is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the

University of British Columbia, Canada. Her work focuses on the role of media in the policy
making process, media education and certification and standards for principals. Correspondence:
Michelle Stack, Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, 2125 Main Mall,
Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada (michelle.stack@ubc.ca).

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