How does the news media cover education? Are certain types of stories privileged over others in national coverage? These are some of the questions that the team at Bellwether set out to answer in their recent analysis of education news stories across the last year. Looking at over 1,500 stories published by a variety of outlets and media types between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025, the researchers sorted these stories into categories by basic thematic content.
Their findings: political articles about topics like the Department of Education, gun violence, or cultural issues dominated the coverage. “Political and cultural news,” the authors write, “appeared to crowd out coverage of academic outcomes and efforts to improve them.”
A closer look at the data reveals just how little coverage traditional academics and academic achievement received. Only 2% of the 1,500+ articles analyzed pertained to academic outcomes, which the researchers defined as student achievement scores or trends, whether at the national level (e.g., the National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP]) or state level.
The Bellwether analysis pointed out that even when combined with thematically similar categories like teachers or curriculum and instruction, these stories collectively received less than a tenth (9%) of the total coverage. Twice as many articles (18%) focused on the US Department of Education alone. Over 6 in 10 (62%) covered more politically charged content including the Department of Education, guns, LGBTQ+ issues, religion in schools, race/racism, and President Trump’s executive orders on DEI.
This is not to say that the other categories are unimportant or unworthy of attention. But the period the researchers covered included the release of the 2024 fourth and eighth grade NAEP scores, which showed that too many fourth and eighth graders continued to struggle in math and reading.
The story of the twelfth grade NAEP results earlier this month was no different. Student achievement is in a crisis, but the frequency of the coverage does not match the urgency of the issue. Perhaps this is part of the reason that less than a majority of the electorate says that fourth and eighth graders are below the 50% proficiency mark in math and reading.
