Commentators have observed a "discourse of derision" in news coverage of the US education system, but the contours of this discourse are not well understood. This article pairs quantitative content analysis with qualitative framing analysis to sharpen the conceptual and empirical focus of the discourse of derision as an object of study. We theorize four components of this discourse--tone, assessments of quality, teacher voice, and criticism of teachers--and analyze them in a representative sample (n = 602) of broadcast television evening news stories from 1990 to 2015. Our findings reveal that the discourse of derision is a common but not overwhelming feature of television news, occurring primarily through negativity in tone and assessments of quality.