John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, noticed that the mainstream media loves bad news about public schools. Even when the news is good, the media somehow twist it into an indictment of public schools, teachers, and/or kids today. This drumbeat of negative coverage feeds into the narrative of the privatizers like DeVos and Koch. The latest example, he notes, are the recently reported scores from an international test.

He writes:

I recently wrote about the two tales of the Oklahoma school Report Card – the alt facts used by State Superintendent Ryan Walters to disparage public education, and the more nuanced view of a serious journalist. This is about the more subtle, but more important, two tales of the OECD’s PISA test scores.

I have become more worried that the newspapers I most respect are paying more attention to winners and losers of edu-political horse races, as opposed to the complexities of public schooling. Then, it was called to my attention by The Grade that “big international wire services tended to emphasize the dismal overall results (Reuters, A.P.). Mainstream national outlets tended to highlight the poor showing from U.S. kids, especially when it comes to math (New York Times, Washington Post, Axios).”So, I followed its links.

I also worry that this might be part of a larger pattern where the press is paying relatively more attention to polling data and attention-grabbing bad news for the Biden administration, such as inflation, immigration, and populist anger, and under-reporting the often more upsetting, complex, problems in other affluent nations.

Starting with the A.P. coverage, it began with “the average international math score [which] fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning. Reading scores fell by the equivalent of half a year.” Granted, there are flaws in the way that those numbers are reached, but these “setbacks spanned nations rich and poor, big and small, with few making progress.” And the A.P. quickly noted that Germany, Iceland and the Netherlands “saw drops of 25 points or more in math scores.”

Then, it reported, “In the U.S., which historically has lagged in math, the average math score fell by 13 points.” But its reading and science “stayed mostly even, in contrast to an international drop of 10 points.” The A.P. then explained that the U.S. “improved to No. 26 in math, up three spots from 2018. It ranked No. 6 in reading and 10th in science, up two and one spots, respectively.”

Moreover, the A.P. addressed the endless headlines about learning loss during Covid, which are continually used as weapons against educators; School closures “didn’t always lead to lower scores.” There was “no clear difference” in performance trends between countries that had limited closures, including Iceland and Sweden, and those with longer closures, including Brazil and Ireland, according to the report.” And the A.P. quoted the OECD, “Many other factors impacted learning during this period, such as the quality of remote teaching and levels of support granted to struggling students.”

Similarly, Reuters quoted OECD director of education Andreas Schleicher who said, “Covid probably played some role but I would not overrate it.” Moreover, “Poorer results tended to be more associated with higher rates of mobile phone use for leisure and where schools reported teacher shortages.”

The New York Times began with, “The math performance of U.S. teenagers has sharply declined since 2018, with scores lower than 20 years ago, and with American students continuing to trail global competitors.” Two paragraphs later, it reported, “The bleak math results were offset by a stronger performance in reading and science, where the United States scored above average internationally.” But for the next 5 paragraphs, the Times focused on the bad news for U.S. schools, as well as saying “Countries that kept schools closed longer generally saw bigger declines.”(In fairness, however, the Times also reported, “In a surprising result, the PISA test did not find a growing gap in math and reading between the highest and lowest U.S. performers during the pandemic.”)

The article briefly reported:

The United States lost less ground than some European countries that prioritized opening schools more quickly. And the United States held steady in reading and science.

The United States even moved up in world rankings — largely because of the declines of other nations.

However, the next 15 paragraphs focused on math declines, which admittedly are extremely upsetting, while often implicitly criticizing schools. It wasn’t until the last paragraph that this context was added:

On other measures, the United States stood out for having more children living with food insecurity (13 percent, compared with an average of 8 percent in other O.E.C.D. countries), more students who are lonely at school (22 percent, versus 16 percent) and more students who do not feel safe at school (13 percent, versus 10 percent).

I also agree with criticism of Axios’ coverage, but I’d push back on the complaint about the Washington Post, at least for now. The Post’s headline, justifiably, was alarming, “Math scores for U.S, students hit all-time low on International exam,” but its subtitle was, “Even so, U.S. students performed better relative to their peers than in past years.” Its article was shorter, not leaving room for details about European declines, but it quoted Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics on the math declines, “Only now can we see that it is a global concern.”

The most balanced report was published in Chalkbeat, which gave equal space to how “The U.S. ranked sixth in reading and 10th in science among the 81 school systems that gave the PISA last year. In 2018, the U.S. ranked eighth in reading and 11th in science.” Moreover:

The steady reading results among U.S. high schoolers run counter to the significant reading declines observed last year for younger students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Academic recovery in reading has also been uneven. Carr said that could indicate that the NAEP has a higher difficulty level than the PISA.

Chalkbeat also quoted U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona who:

Pointed to the results as an indicator of the impact of the federal investments made in schools during the pandemic, much of which was spent on academic recovery initiatives, such as tutoring and mental health support for students.

That spending “kept the United States in the game,” Cardona said. Without it, he said, the U.S. would be “in the same boat” as other countries that didn’t spend as much and saw steeper declines. .

And that brings me back to my wider worry that the press, in a time when the presidential race could determine whether our democracy survives, is headlining American problems, without revealing that affluent European nations are doing worse in many areas where President Biden is being blamed for not solving long term challenges, ranging from inflation to anti-immigrant-driven populism.