This article demonstrates how media coverage employs dominant neoliberal narratives and discourses to blame public education for societal ills. The authors examine how the media's use of neoliberal narrative and discourse has hegemonically become the "new normal" of public education and school reform. Utilizing data from media coverage of public education since the election of President Barack Obama, the authors illustrate how mainstream media news outlets (television, cable, newspapers, etc.) frame public education reform as a social, political, moral, and, above all, an economic imperative through the use a neoliberal interpretive framework, particularly the discourse of "shared sacrifice". The authors argue that the media's unbalanced treatment and integration of neoliberal educational discourses signals a dangerous turn in how we think about the relationship between public education and American democracy. Such hegemonic academic repression demands both moral outrage and a counter-hegemonic response.