April brings both hope and fear to thousands of anxious teenagers. It is the month when many high school seniors receive acceptances and rejections from the colleges of their choice.

But, in the last decade, April has gained another distinction: It has also become the month when the public is bombarded by media stories about the difficulty of gaining admission to our nation’s elite colleges. In what has become an annual ritual, we will once again hear that selective schools are receiving more applications than ever, creating stress, anxiety, uncertainty and unhappiness for our top high school academic performers.

This story is one of several recurring media narratives on education. Here are a few of the others.

• College costs continue to rise, making it unaffordable for many.

• Higher proportions of rich people attend and graduate from college than poor people.

• People with college degrees make more money than people without college degrees.

• Too few high school graduates are academically prepared for college.

• American students have lower test scores than in many other developed countries.

• White and Asian students outperform black, Hispanic and Native American students.

The problem is not that these stories are inaccurate. They are accurate. The problem is that these stories shed no new light on either the extent of or the solutions to our educational crisis.

For those who doubt that we have an educational crisis, the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the U.S. Department of Education’s national report card — tells us that less than 40 percent of our high school seniors are academically prepared for college-level math and reading. For those who doubt that the public is aware of the crisis, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, education ranked third — behind terrorism and the economy — in terms of the public’s policy priorities for 2015.

Solutions to our social problems do not arise spontaneously. They need to be built and nurtured. And the press has a central role to play in this process. It is through their coverage that we learn about potential solutions. It is through their coverage that we pose questions and debate answers. It is through their coverage that we develop consensus. It is though their coverage that we create a movement by mobilizing opinion and resources.

To be fair, not all the educational press focuses on stale stories. Important education topics do receive substantial attention including coverage of some of the most pressing issues of the day: restructuring college loans, higher education accountability, Common Core, testing, charter schools, vouchers, and teacher evaluations. But even these often suffer from one particular kind of coverage, one that focuses on the political perspective — which parties and candidates support which positions — rather than on the substance.

Just last month, several media outlets reported on a new study that showed that rich people are more likely than poor people to graduate from college. We have heard this story before. Later this month we will again hear that admission to an elite college is becoming more difficult. And while no one questions the intentions behind much the coverage, we must ask how these stories further the national conversation on improving our schools and colleges. Repeating the old does little to help the new.