This article examines the political discourse surrounding NCLB, educational reform, and how that discourse shaped perceptions of public education during the Bush Administration. Examining mass media campaigns in the New York Times and Time Magazine, the article demonstrates how the media has visually and textually framed and reinforced NCLB and…

Federal policy now focuses on teacher "effectiveness" rather than teacher "quality" as its central policy concern. Rather than measuring inputs, the new focus looks to measure the outcomes of a teacher's work--that is, the extent to which the educator has met crucial student needs, such as improved student achievement. As…

The PDK/Gallup Poll on the Public's Attitudes about Public Education continually reports that there is a positive grading trend with parents when asked to assign a grade to their local school, however, less than 20 percent of the public give our schools across the nation a grade of an A or B. This negative perception of education encourages the…

When public schools opened in New York City in September 2003 amid reports of widespread classroom overcrowding, parents, educators, and policymakers demanded an explanation. There, at the ready, was Michael Winerip, the education columnist for the "New York Times." The crowding, wrote Winerip in the first of a series of hard-hitting…

Cathy Grimes has become something of an expert on the No Child Left Behind Act. She keeps a copy of the hefty federal law at her desk--and has actually read it. Ms. Grimes is not a school administrator or state education official. She does not work at a think tank, either. She's the education reporter for the "Walla Walla Union-Bulletin"…

This article encourages college presidents and trustees to prepare for public relations challenges by tracking issues through four distinct stages: fringe, emerging, getting hot, and white hot/too late. "Fringe" refers to, for example, people discussing an issue at conferences, in professional publications, or among a few concerned…

To hear many educators tell it, their biggest problem these days is America's high expectations of school performance. The media keep repeating how the global economy soon will require nearly all young Americans to be fully prepared for post-secondary education. Legislators keep ratcheting up state-imposed and No Child Left Behind thresholds and…

Imagine a scenario in which an individual gets up every day and goes to work in fear--in fear of performing the difficult tasks at work--in fear of the colleagues who perform better. The individual is in fear of the boss who is omnipotent, larger than life and constantly judging, evaluating, and sentencing employees to a lifetime of failure. The…