ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how politicians and journalists in the US, the UK and Australia play on people’s anxieties — manifestations of the risk society — relative to school choice, educational standards and teacher preparation. The greater the anxiety and political substance, the greater is the opportunity for political leverage through the dog whistle and the continued mediatization of school educational policy and practice. According to Loveless, dog-whistling education standards in the mathematics curricular can be evident in ostensibly the most innocuous curriculum documents. Australian right-wing politics, school educational policy and Sky News combined in a grossly inglorious manner to throw sharp contrast on the political and journalistic dog whistle. In the US, the UK and Australia, and elsewhere, national assessment policies continue to attract research in an attempt to understand their inherent inequity. The chapter concludes with a comparative analysis of the above issues as they are manifest in the US, the UK and Australia.
