The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System—And How to Fix It

by Natalie Wexler

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis—and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty.

It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system—one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware.

But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong—it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, Professional Development, Audiobook, Parenting, School

Audiobook

First published August 6, 2019

About the author

Natalie Wexler is the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix It. She is the co-author, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades, and is a senior contributor on education to Forbes. Her op-eds and articles have appeared in a number of publications, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

She is also the author of three novels: A More Obedient Wife, The Mother Daughter Show, and The Observer.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was maddening, because it could have been an excellent exploration of the tension inherent in school curriculum. But the title should have clued me into the fact that this was promotion of an idea rather than an exploration of an idea. Any author that suggests that there's a single "cause" of a "broken system" and offers a single solution to "fix" it is probably not going to satisfy me. The book reminded me of those Netflix "documentaries" that are really just position pieces for a particular diet or political issue.

The thesis is that the use of a curriculum that promotes knowledge acquisition rather than isolated skill development is more likely to reduce the gap between affluent students and students struggling with poverty. The author already believes this and comes to the table with a particular curriculum package in mind (making me wonder if she gets some sort of profit or benefit from advocating for it...). But using this guiding premise obscures the very real question at the heart of the curriculum dilemma: can schools prepare students that live in an unequal society to become equals? Critics of her favored curriculum package and approach have asked questions like, Who decides which knowledge and which stories and which history gets top billing? In practice, historically, this has been a political minefield. While some educators believe that a deep, set, uniform body of content allows students the opportunity to build schema, others claim that content chosen by people already in power simply replicates existing power structures. Curriculum problems are challenging and complicated and high stakes, and this book was a missed opportunity to get into the thorny meat of those problems.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting, informative, and definitely a worthwhile read.

Full review at LucyKnowsThings.com.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a highly readable and convincing story about an old concern. The devastating one-line summary is that American kids are learning stuff despite school, not because of it. Ideally, there would be strong evidence to support the recommended solutions. Unfortunately, despite the amazingly favorable setup for large-scale evaluation of effectiveness, the education world seems to be 50 years behind medicine in starting to embrace an approach that is evidence-based instead of eminence-based. Having listened to the audiobook, I didn't get references; I'm intrigued enough to think of getting the hard copy and if Wexler's advice is just more theory backed by anecdotes, I will lower the rating.

-Notes from the book:
Ch 2: Non-poor kids make up for the lack of teaching at school by learning at home, on vacation, etc.
Ch 4: "Research based programs" are a meaningless nightmare because of all the counterfeit evidence used to sell tools and services.
Ch 10: Teachers vastly underestimate the learning capacity of students. The key to helping children comprehend complex text is to have them look for evidence in the text for whatever they are discussing.
For introducing new methods to teachers, it is important to pilot things. Start small. Show some videos with discussion about the method and give them a specific text to use for teaching, with instructions for how to do it. Let some early adopters/champions volunteer to try it, then when they get results much better than what they are used to (kids are more engaged, more joyful AND reading above expected level AND learning new content) then the other teachers will want to try it.
Ch 12: Louisiana did better than most states with dissemination along these lines of peer-to-peer spread as opposed to top-down directives. Engage NY curriculum and others free online to facilitate scaling up.
Ch 11: The parents of non-poor kids make sure they get what they need for learning to read and write.

Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really valued this book’s critique of skills-based literacy curriculum that is devoid of any real in-depth and interesting content. I’ve had a gut feeling for a while that the common core standards have led many schools and curriculum producers to teach reading superficially, with this seemingly doable one skill at a time approach. And unfortunately because of NCLB, “underperforming” schools started to focus more on Reading and Math and less on subjects like Science and Social Studies, as a means of getting test scores up, which, unsurprisingly, has been ineffective in getting scores up. I was, however, really disappointed with how fixated the author was on one curriculum: Core Knowledge. As the author points out, this curriculum has been critiqued for years for being Eurocentric. She brushes over this critique without really engaging with it. It’s 2019! Students of diverse identities deserve to be centered at school. Students deserve to learn about their own histories in rigorous and nuanced ways, which contrary to what the author suggests, is possible. Our failure to honor our students’ histories and experiences has had and continues to have dire consequences. The author also mocks teachers for expressing a desire for autonomy over what they teach without really grappling with why that’s so important to them. She just makes it sound like we want our own way despite the harm it does to kids. If she wasn’t so set on selling Core Knowledge, she might have opened herself up to the nuances of this argument a bit more, before the very last chapter of the book, and allowed educators to really think about: what is important for students to know? What is worth building knowledge around? And how can we build consensus on what to build knowledge around? I think if she would have wrestled with these questions more and yelled “Core Knowledge” less, it would have left everyone off in a more meaningful place. ***I just downgraded my review because it became clearer to me that Wexler has an agenda she isn’t being transparent about. I just ran across a Guardian article about one of the school’s she highlighted in her book, Michaela Community School in London, for their seemingly great focus on knowledge-based curriculum. This is how they conduct business: “Pupils are given demerits or detention for forgetting to bring a pencil or pen, or for talking in corridors when moving between lessons. The school hit the headlines again when it was reported that children whose parents had failed to pay for their lunches were made to eat separately from their classmates.” I mean, what price are we willing to pay for raising test scores?

[Kelsey Syers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely changed my outlook on elementary teaching methods and curriculum. The argument is that far too much time is spent on reading skills in elementary school instead of subjects that "build background" like Science and Social Studies. I used to be a believer in "reading-centered" elementary classrooms, but this book has made me reevaluate that belief. How can a student read scientific or historical texts if he or she doesn't have the background necessary to understand the context and vocabulary? Some parts are a bit dry but the overall experience is worth it. Highly recommended.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost wanted to give it four stars because it was easy to read, which can be hard for a nonfiction education book. But I’m also very critical of many parts of this book, so it seems more sensible to rate it a 3. I have a lot to say about this book and have since I started reading it. So here’s a review I doubt anyone will read, but will be cathartic for me:

The title of this book is misleading- it doesn’t talk about our broken education system as a whole, it really only focuses on literacy. I very much support her main thesis: elementary school reading class must include a focus on decoding and phonics. Content knowledge is a critical piece of literacy, so students should have rigorous content specific lessons and readings starting in early elementary school. I fully support all of that, 100%!!

She correctly mentions that most public school has been whittled down to mostly reading and math focus, with barely any time or attention given to science or social studies, particularly in grades K-8. And she correctly identifies that reading class is often not a decoding or phonics focused class, and time is only reserved for reading comprehension skills and leveled text readers. I also fully agree with that, and I’ve seen it myself before and been frustrated by some of this as well.

What continually irks me about the book is that she wastes full chapters placing blame on the incorrect people as to WHY this is currently the case. I think there is one glaring reason above all others as to why schools teach skills instead of content currently. - Since NCLB in 2001 school performance has been based on standardized test scores, particularly in reading and math class for K-8 students. Since Common Core was released, standards are attached to skills. When students perform poorly on the standardized tests, each question on the test purports to assess a particular skill (standard). Because of this, schools have become obsessed with teaching kids SKILLS, because those are tested. CONTENT isn’t assessed. Content rich classes like science and social studies aren’t assessed- so therefor the classes are dropped from the schedules of many schools, denying kids their best opportunity to work with grade specific, engaging, content focused nonfiction reading. Does Wexler mention all of this? Briefly. She glosses over it at certain points in the book for sure. But she wastes WAY MORE TIME shaming things that I really don’t think are the main cause of the way literacy is currently taught in schools.

She roasts progressive education as a whole, using only stereotypes based in her anecdotal experiences as evidence. She makes claims like progressive education never teaches specific content, and that it allows kids as young as five to do entirely project based, choice based work. Nonsense. She actually kind of demonizes the entire concept of project based learning, which can often be done really well and be a great strategy for students.

She claims social studies pushed history out of the curriculum decades ago. (My social studies classes had always been like 95% history), she makes broad claims about education schools for teachers, as if they all function the same and all are afraid of teaching kids specific content or how to decode. None of those claims accurately portrayed either education school I went to.

She also champions things that I really don’t think help much. She champions the professional development culture at Achievement First, a network with a reputation of having its teachers leave with a PTSD type feeling. She explains the influence of Doug Lemov and “Teach Like a Champion” while totally glossing over the superficial and somewhat racist overtones of that entire book and philosophy. She’ll trust an in-house study from Achievement First without linking to the study in her works cited section, yet totally roast Teachers College Reading and Writing Project using studies she does cite. She speaks so highly of the Expeditionary Learning curriculum used in NYS- a curriculum I used that was fine, but certainly not a panacea for our literacy woes. She also never uses concrete data to back up any of the methods she supports. Instead she just uses anecdotal stories- like a first grader who started using the word “gluteus Maximus” instead of “bottom”. Cool story, I suppose, but even the most dysfunctional class in the world has an occasional cute anecdote to share.

Basically what I’m saying here, is she picks and chooses what she likes and doesn’t like from an apparently entirely anecdotal, personal perspective. Her main thesis is awesome and I fully support it. But the ways she tries to get us to believe her are flawed, sometimes inaccurate, and mostly just her personal opinion masked as facts.

The Epilogue of the book is one of the best chapters. It’s where she finally addresses how we need to deal with standardized tests, and I think she gives great suggestions here. (Basically test content- and if you make the kids read documents and write responses, you can use a content focused test to test ELA as well.) That sounds like a great recommendation to me.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not an educator. I am a parent of 3 dyslexic children who have been failed by the current state of reading in our current educational system. I picked up this book after being intrigued by the author’s articles for Forbes over this past year. I am an advocate for schools using structured literacy, and have often wondered how comprehension could be better addressed as one of the key components of reading. I saw in my own kid’s school days the heavy focus on the “comprehension skills”. I knew there was more. I have exercised my freedom, and now homeschool incorporating the pieces addressed in this book. The author gives a wonderful window into the current classroom in America. The answers seem obvious as you read through and see the problems, but we are battling entrenched philosophies and ideas. The data doesn’t lie. What is currently happening is not working. I am excited to see what comes next after educators read this book, and take a hard look at what needs to be changed. I will be sharing it with educators around me. Thanks to Nat Wexler for shining the light on how we can, and should, do better, this was needed.

[Jean-Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need a Buzzfeed quiz to determine my education ideology. I’m a homeschooler, not a teacher. My degree is in psychology, not education. My career experience is in corporate communications, not education. From my K-8 experiment with a sample size of 2 I have found that knowledge-based (vs. skills-based) learning is my vibe and makes absolute sense to me. The biggest question, of course, is what knowledge should be passed down. For this information I try to turn to the experts by reading their books and following their ideas online and on social media. My teen started college early. She completed English Comp I at 14 and English Comp II at 16 -- each with an A. I credit her success in the courses more to her knowledge than her skills. In order to write well, you need to have a fundamental knowledge about the world to interpret and analyze. At the very least you need to know what questions to ask and how to do your research. My children and I never focused on drills or worksheets. The skills often developed naturally as we immersed ourselves in knowledge accumulation. As Wexler points out, knowledge learning is marathon not a race. My children have had the benefit of one teacher focused on developing that knowledge over many years – looking for new experiences, priming them for new knowledge, and helping them make connections with past knowledge. After a Frida Kahlo art exhibit, we read about the artist, watched movies about the artist, and discussed it at dinnertime. After we experienced Tibetan Monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta create a sand mandala at our local university, my daughter (with my assistance) created a script and produced a video about mandalas. When we became interested in constellations, we read books, watched movies, visited planetariums, and camped out in the backyard with our binoculars and telescope. There was no grade, no assessment, no due date. The focus was always on acquiring knowledge, while practicing a few skills along the way. Practicing skills is often more fun when there’s a purpose, when it’s social, or when there’s an audience. I wish I knew how to make the school system better. I only know what so many kids are missing out on when the learning is disjointed and detached, excessively assessed, and needlessly graded.Not to mention the hours spent on homework after being in school all day. My homeschool way is not scalable or sustainable, but I figured if someone was going to make educational guinea pigs out of my kids, it should be me. Reading Wexler’s account of how the system has been actively sabotaged by politics Lynne Cheney and Rush Limbaugh made me want to spit fire. The Knowledge Gap is a great read for both educators and homeschoolers. It has inspired me to put a little more pep in my step while Child #2 and I start the second half of our middle school years.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning: I can’t imagine this review being interesting to non-teachers!

4/5 Natalie Wexler is an education journalist who weaves research, classroom visits, and history together to show that “teaching disconnected comprehension skills boosts neither comprehension nor reading scores”. In most schools, the reading subject is taught by focusing on a skill/strategy like “finding the main idea” or “inferring about characters” week-to-week. The context (i.e. the text you’re reading to get to that skill) is seen is secondary. Students might be reading about frogs one day, polar bears the best, Kenya the day after, etc.

Instead, Wexler advocates for a “knowledge-based” approach. What students are lacking, she argues, is knowledge about the world. Comprehension skill/strategies are important - but should come in tandem with social studies and science forward content.

*NOTE: Wexler does not address decoding other than to say that, “there’s an overwhelming scientific consensus that the best way to teach decoding is to teach foundational reading skills in a systematic and explicit manner.”

Positives/Agree:
- Teachers need good curriculum to be good teachers... there’s so much crappy curriculum out there that teachers feel like they need to create their own (with less-than-stellar results)

- High-stakes testing has done nothing but push harmful teaching practices

- Drilling comprehension skills with little regard for WHAT students are learning is unhelpful

- We need to think about the WHOLE education of a student, regardless of what they do in your room that year

- TRIGGER WARNING: Lucy Calkins. We can do better.

- We need to teach writing better.

Negatives/Disagree:
- Wexler largely discounts poverty as a cause of lower achievement in communities - a shocking misjudgment

- Not one curriculum can “save” education

- She’s never been a teacher

- Pushes forward Core Knowledge curriculum so much I wonder if she was compensated

- Whose history do these curriculums tell? Are we arming students to be actively anti-racist through curriculums like Wit & Wisdom, Core Knowledge, EL Education, American Reading Company? Do we need them to?

- I LOVE some fiction/narrative nonfiction that I teach in class. Do these curriculums have enough rich literature?

- I’ve heard a lot of criticism from teachers who have used some of these curriculums in the classroom... is Wexler’s idea only better theoretically?

- Are leveled texts EVER appropriate? They seem necessary?

- Learning how we learn is knowing the secrets of the brain - difficult. How much value should we give to digesting that research into ELA curriculum?

Finally, if you’re a teacher - I’d love to hear your thoughts! I find I learn best from other teachers.

[Cary Draper · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a full calendar year I have finished this book. More than ever I’m convinced that students need to be learning actual content instead of isolated skills. I’m also more convinced that a content-based curriculum can help this. I appreciated that she ended the book by talking about different curriculum options and what various states are doing. This was refreshing after the Core Knowledge heavy majority of the book. She also acknowledged the role that standardized testing plays in exacerbating the problem. Overall, a good read and some takeaways I hope to implement this year.

[Susan D'Entremont · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had be nodding in agreement to many things, changed my mind on some things, and included things I disagree with. Reading it is depressing - so much of what we are doing in k12 education has no basis in research or even runs contrary to respected research. But also hopeful - because there are ways and methods that can be used so children from all backgrounds can learn more readily.

The author highlighted very clearly why teachers are reluctant to take on new programs, even those based on extensive research. Teachers are very tired of every year or two or three being told by people not in the classroom that they need to switch to the next great thing and totally retool what they have been doing. I see this all the time in the district my kids attend, and I don't blame the teachers. I guess the reason why we are not willing to look at longitudinal studies or give programs time to show results is that we are worried that we may lose this year's cohort of students. The stakes are high. But constantly switching from program to program that have very short track records also isn't helping kids.

The author did change my mind about content rich curriculum. I have often thought, like many in the book, that if students are given skills they will be able to analyze and study whatever they want. What content they are taught in school doesn't matter that much. But she showed how so many of the skills are based on a certain critical knowledge of the world, and if we continue with skill-based teaching, we are really hurting those kids who do not come from content rich homes like those students with highly educated parents. She showed that you can have a content outline of curriculum and still allow room for inclusion of marginalized populations, local history and so forth, as connected to the topic. She also helped me understand why parents of color and low income parents often want a more classical, great books type approach to education, something I have noticed and wondered about. The parents can feel that by not including that stuff, the education establishment is trying to keep their kids outsiders.

I was surprised to read her praise of New York State's Common Core curriculum since my experience has not been positive with it. But as I read on, I realized that what the state said and what they actually did or stressed to educators were two very different things. This explains why, the first time I heard a presentation at PTA about Common Core, before it was implemented, it sounded very good to me. The presenter talked about focusing on depth, not breadth, of knowledge. Since I felt like this was what my kids were missing in school, I was all for it. But when it was implemented, it seemed to be just the opposite. Algebra classes began including things like calculus, rather than making sure the kids understood inside and out algebra concepts in that class so they would be more prepared to do advanced math in later grades. The book does a poor job at explaining what went wrong between the conceptualization of Common Core and its implementation, at least in my state. She touches on the increased focus on standardized testing, but, in my mind, this is a huge reason of why the new curriculum went sideways in a really bad way.

So, although I have problems with some of the things the author recommends in the book, she provides lots of food for thought and may get educators questioning their tightly held, but likely incorrect, beliefs. I would like to see more school boards and directors of curriculum reading it if only so they can start asking better questions when they adopt new texts or programs.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was infuriating. After reading 200+ pages about how the education system (and teachers in particular) are failing children, no solutions were offered.

The author has never been an educator, but somehow feels entitled to criticize teachers. In one example she gave of her experience observing in a classroom, she ripped apart a student teacher's very first lesson. It was painful to read and I am horrified at how that student teacher would feel about it.

Additionally, the author cites herself as a source a minimum of five times, she cites many blog articles, and she cites conversations. There is an extreme lack of empirically-researched evidence given and the author focused mainly on charter schools and those who promoted them (many of whom, such as Doug Lemov, have been disregarded as leading researchers or educators because of how their practices are culturally detrimental rather than culturally responsive). The language the author uses around certain schools and districts is very deficit-based and demonstrates an inherent bias towards white, suburban, affluent schools and implies that public schools in other areas cannot possibly teach students successfully and instead only charter, private, or independent schools in those areas can. This bias and belief is detrimental and offensive.

That all being said, the author's points around the importance of teaching phonics, social studies, and science are all valid and can be found other places from other sources that do have research to support them (however, the author did not cite or focus on these points).

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oddly written. Portraying teachers as either too stupid to live, unaware of the most basic things taught, or likening them to religious fanatics, that hold tight to their beliefs with complete disregard for the well being of their students.
I enjoyed reading some of the "accounts" from "classrooms" she visited, experiments from the past, and the evolution of theories.
I agree with a good portion of what she stated as far as giving students more knowledge, making reading more relevant and focusing on content that will enrich their lives, hold their interest, and increase knowledge.
Can't really take this as a "fix it" manual when it doesn't address poverty.
I have to put out there that in all of my years in classrooms, I have never, NEVER seen a teacher sit at her desk reviewing student work, while students work independently in a FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM (or second grade for that matter). Where was she? That's insane.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out intrigued with the author's premise, but the more I read, the more I became insulted as a teacher. This book is full of bias and a lack of understanding of what it really means to be an educator. When you look up the author's credentials, you realize she doesn't have any authority to make the claims that she does about the education system. She says that she is an education journalist, and yet has no degrees in education.

In her acknowledgments, she admits that "a mere five years ago, I knew nothing about the subject of this book-even though I thought I knew quite a bit about education." Anyone working in the education field will tell you it takes a lot longer than five years to truly understand what is going on in the education world, especially if you are just a casual observer. Wexler didn't always have her facts straight and even seemed to contradict herself in parts. There were parts that I completely lost focus on what she was even trying to say!

While there are some points made that I can agree with (teaching phonics at an early age, and introducing vocabulary through content areas like science and social studies, there was just so much bias running through this book (even though she takes great lengths to accuse others of being blinded by their own bias) that I couldn't find myself siding with the author. If you are an educator or interested in becoming an educator I highly recommend that you skip this one.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I certainly agree with Ms Wexler that students have a large gap in fundamental knowledge history, geography, science, and literature - classic literature. When I came back into the teaching profession, I was in my late 40's, and I knew that K-12 education had changed from the time I was a student and even from the '70's when I trained to be a teacher. Teachers now were more concerned about teaching"to the test" and addressing all of the educational theories that had been drilled into their heads than teaching content knowledge. I also noticed that very few teachers had graduate degrees in subject matter, such as mathamatics, English, history, or biology. No, they all had advanced degrees in education. When my own children were in elementary school, I was amazed at the lack content they were learning at school. Wexler addresses in her book the fact that educated parents with higher incomes make up for the lack of transmitted knowledge by teachers in public schools by seeing that their children get experiences through travel, exposure to more fiction and non-fiction books, engage their children in talk about world events, take them to museums, send them to a wide variety of camps and special programs that enhance their knowledge and peak their curiosity. Things that low income, less educated parents can't do or don't know they should be doing to give their children more opportunities to learn and build stores of knowledge that they will use throughout their educational years. Many erroneously believe that is why they are sending their children to school.
There are so many ways that parents can be wonderful teachers to their children even if they have very little money or education themselves.I came from a poor family and both of my parents were high school drop outs, but our education was important to them. I grew up in a small coal mining town where almost everyone fell below the poverty level. Yet, my education was rich in content knowledge. From elementary to high school we had lessons in history and science. We wrote book reports on fiction and non-fiction books, we went out in nature to look under rocks, hunted for arrowheads, looked for animal tracks after which we had lessons on the rocks we turned over or about the insects we found underneath, we talked about the Native Americans that lived in our area and who among us were part "Indian" and we learned about the animals both living and prehistoric that roamed our neighborhood. My parents took their children on road trips to various places and if there was a free museum or roadside attraction of historical import we stopped. My mother passed on make-up or trips to the "beauty parlour" so we could have the newspaper delivered to our home. We had few books in our house, but the two most important was a good dictionary and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in very small print.

May be it was because of those two books that I decided to become a high school English teacher. I thought I would be sharing my love of good literature, mostly the classics with students, and help them to appreciate poetry. I also thought they would be writing the kind of essays I had been asked to write in high school where I demonstrated my understanding literature, commented on the author's style, analyzed characters, gushed over the writer's use of literary devices, praised his moving prose, or her enlightening verse. I thought I would be teaching my students how to write research papers, using impressive source material with dazzling quotes, and noted in perfect formatted footnotes.

What I was asked to teach in the 1990's was a watered down curriculum with very little rigor. But what was most discouraging was that most of my students had such little background knowledge that I had to give them history lessons before I could teach a piece of literature. I found my students poor vocabulary to be a stumbling block to their understanding and writing. Even more disappointing was that every year more literature or writing assignments had to be eliminated so we could cover items that would be on standardized tests. My students had trouble writing a coherent five paragraph essay in three weeks. When I was in high school, we would get a essay assignment on Monday and the essay was due on Friday, and we didn't get to work on it in class. I and my collaborating teacher spoon fed these essays to our students for weeks, and they were still awful. What made this so sad was that I taught in one of California's best school districts where parents were educated and socioeconomically advantaged yet the these kids were lacking in foundational knowledge that would have aided them in high school and college. I felt sorry for them because they were getting a "dumb ed-down" education.

Wexler like most educational activist believes every student needs to go to college to be a happy, productive, and wealth generating human being. Sorry, but college would be a torture to certain students, and educators are doing a disservice to them by not realizing that some people can be fulfilled and happy, plus make a good living for their families being a carpenter, a plumber, or a mechanic. She decried the tract system of years-gone-by, but just as bad is damaging push for students who struggle with academic subjects to endure more years of failure before they can escape and do something they really love. In high school I had a friend who did really well in school (She got better grades than I). Everyone thought she should go to college, but she didn't want to go. All she wanted to do was fix hair. She loved creating elaborate hair-dos. To this day, cutting, styling, dying, and perming hair brings her great joy and satisfaction.
(Please forgive my grammatical and usage mistakes - it's late, and I'm old and burned out by reading so many appalling bad essays.)

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe I was first introduced to the idea of content-based curriculum in an Atlantic article written by Natalie Wexler to promote this book. I was hooked, and started doing feverish research to learn more. But when I finally got my hands on "The Knowledge Gap," I was inspired all over again. This is such an interesting topic and I really want to see it in action.

The basic concept of the book is this: knowledge is required to be a successful reader and writer. In schools today, especially in primary grades, we are teaching *skills* without giving students knowledge. Wexler claims research shows that skills practice is not transferable to different topics--you can't practice comparing and contrasting lions and tigers and be able to successfully compare and contrast any two subjects. You need *background knowledge* in order to successfully utilize reading comprehension and writing skills. And we do not teach knowledge in schools until at least middle school--when Wexler says it's too late.

What really inspires me is the idea that teaching knowledge in schools can serve to equal the playing field for marginalized groups of students, who may not be accessing this knowledge at home. The idea is that wealthier students, students with highly educated parents, and white students are exposed to more knowledge of the world at home, and are able to use that knowledge to succeed academically despite a skill-based educational system. Other students are not so lucky: without coming to school with plenty of background knowledge, marginalized groups of students struggle to keep up.

Beyond the idea that content-based curriculum could serve as a tool for educational equity, it also seems like this kind of teaching is more fun and engaging for students. I know this from limited personal experience: when I had an opportunity to create social studies lessons for my third graders, I chose to do a deep dive into important figures in Black history. They seemed much more engaged than during our daily reading comprehension skills practice. This was just a small portion of our school year, but it was my favorite and most memorable part. I would love an opportunity to teach reading comprehension through history, literature, and science.

This book focuses a lot on the primary education, so those familiar with the basic tenants of early childhood education, as well as popular teaching techniques for those age groups, will get the most out of this book. It is possible the book could seem a bit jargon-y for those not as familiar with early elementary teaching practices.

I can say that Natalie Wexler has done A LOT of research into the current educational sphere: she discusses many influential figures in education today, including Doug Lemov, author of "Teach Like a Champion" and Lucy Calkins, author of an extremely popular writing curriculum. For educators who are tuned into trends in the field, this book will address a lot of your concerns. I really appreciated that.

For me, this book just made sense. This approach to education seems like something that would work, and something that I would love to teach. I'll definitely be following the knowledge-based learning movement in the future to see what happens next. I highly recommend this book for anyone in education who is interested in learning more about what a content-based curriculum could look like.

[Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book claims to be based on science, but it’s really an opinion piece littered with bias. It’s an example of how not to conduct and present research. You can’t draw results from a two-class case study when one of the classes drops out of the study. It’s unfortunate that her research is so flawed, as the premise is interesting and worth pursuing.

[Shelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I don't think the book represents the ideas of Whole Language with accuracy, I am able to overlook it because the book describes so much of what I believe. I have not been a fan of "comprehension instruction" because reading is a transaction between the reader and the text and that transaction is different for every child because of their background knowledge. So when people ask, "How do you teach reading?" I say, "Well. It's difficult to explain because it depends."

I do believe that students need to have an understanding of phonics, phonemic awareness, and the mechanics of language. That goes so far. If you don't know what a colonel is then phonics nor phonemic awareness will support you. You have to know some stuff. In fact, you have to know a lot of stuff. And if you don't teach science and social studies-- which is the context for the "stuff" then you will be at a disadvantage.

Many schools have stopped teaching science and social studies in order to make room for more reading instruction. I have refused. I believe it is a civil right that ALL children have access to ALL content. I believe that ALL children should have access to grade level content. This book suggests that there is some truth in these ideas. The book also reinforces that integrating content only provides a context to learn the vocabulary and ideas which then allows students to think critically about the topic as they dive deep into the tenets of the topic. I have always believed this to be true. Our brains seek out connections. I believe this is the premise of Whole Language. Not the "look at the pictures and just guess the word" script that is often used to negatively disparage whole language. Whole language practioners believe that context matters vs. teaching in isolation.

I think it is a must read.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot of good points, and I definitely think employees in the Department of Education need to read this. I'm not buying that this is the magic bullet to ending disparity between lower socioeconomic students and affluent ones. I have long protested my daughter's public school education as being severely lacking in substance. Of course, summers for her involved learning about history, science, and the much hated diagramming sentences. Research about how students learn should be at the hub of our educational system. We should not be teaching the same way we have for the last 100 years in light of all of the new discoveries of a child's brain. This book makes for an interesting read of the different camps of thought in education.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewer note: I am not a professional educator, and as such, am not fully qualified to evaluate all the claims Wexler makes. I am a parent of two children in the public schools and have kept abreast of education reform and school curriculum issues. My review reflects how well I feel Wexler has made her argument as well as any preexisting background information I have.

Natalie Wexler believes that she's found the missing piece in our constant efforts to reform education: knowledge. We have focused on skills as an abstraction, rather than the content underlying them. This is why even as lower grade reading scores show signs of improvement, 8th grade scores remain low and high schoolers lack key skills and knowledge.

She begins with reading, which I honestly found the most compelling section of the book. Reading comes in two phases: decoding and comprehension. There is good evidence that decoding is best taught using phonics-based instruction (and here she goes into the "reading wars" between phonics based and whole language instruction). Although the evidence is robust here, I have seen researchers caution that we don't necessarily have a proven curriculum for teaching it. The UK has seen success with its focused synthetic phonics curriculum. She takes particular aim at Balanced Literacy (which she regards as primarily whole-language based despite its name) and its primary author, Lucy Calkins.

The second phase is comprehension. This is where our instruction really goes off the rails. Wexler brings cognitive science and experiments in to show that our background knowledge greatly influences our comprehension of the text: imagine reading a story about cricket (the game) without any knowledge of what a batsman, bowler, or wicket is? The skills based approach jibes with my experience of my kids' elementary school. Since skills are abstractions that can be applied to any piece of text, the content is less important. Kids are encouraged to focus on applying specific skills (making text-to-self connections, following a sequence of events) and less to building up a larger store of knowledge for use with later texts. The emphasis is on self-connection and relating to texts--a skill my autistic child has difficulty with, and which, Wexler points out, can interfere with content if allowed to take over a topic.

Here's where we meet her observational classrooms. Both teachers are young, with only a few years of experience, and teach in DC charter schools. Both are portrayed as having good basic teaching skills. One teaches using a traditional skills based curriculum, the other uses Core Knowledge. Later in the year, the first teacher refuses to continue; she's replaced by another young teacher at another charter school. Teachers #2 and #3 both quit as classroom teachers at the end of the year (#2 moves to a private school; #3 changes positions). While these stories were interesting, too often I felt I was reading anecdotes used as data. I had similar qualms about the visit to Michaela Community School in London, which firstly was a poor comparison as a secondary school (an age when American schools are moving to a more knowledge based model) and two, I know from regular UK news-reading that Michaela is extremely controversial for its opinionated (to say the least) headteacher and incredibly rigid discipline policies (which said head believes should be done everywhere). That was glossed over in the book. The problem here, of course, is that much educational research is poor quality and politicians aren't much interested in investing in it.

Wexler doesn't blame classroom teachers. In her view, many are doing a good job--with what they are taught to do. They are not effective because they are "bad teachers" but because they are tasked with delivering an ineffective curriculum. Further they are taught that reading is an independent skill--that students must learn to read before they can read to learn, and that the two cannot be done in tandem. Teachers are also taught that most science and social studies are inappropriate before grade 3, which turns K-2 into a solid slog of reading and math blocks. (Math, where content and skills cannot be separated cleanly, is generally omitted from this book.)

Curriculum, moreover, is a political third rail. Even when educators want to emphasize content more, deciding what to include incites a political storm. E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy raised outcries from the left, but today, the right is more active, objecting to Common Core and the AP US History revisions. It's easier to define neutral, politically uncontroversial skills. Wexler places some blame on teachers here, who are afraid of losing autonomy--but overly scripted lessons have been an issue, and longtime teachers have seen many trends come and go, all claiming to be evidence based.

One difficulty here is that the largest body of evidence Wexler gets is on Core Knowledge, E.D. Hirsch's curriculum. While she's largely enthusiastic about it, she does herself some intellectual credit and admits it's imperfect--its science is less inspiring to the kids than the English/social studies focused units. There can be many ways to implement a knowledge based curriculum, or even to tie skills to content based units. In first grade, my son's class spent six weeks learning about the rainforest and finished by each writing a report about a rainforest animal that they presented to the parents. The kids loved it, and they clearly had managed to use all their skills while focusing on a coherent, planned set of materials and topic rather than the typical reader.

There's a lot more to this book, and I do recommend it, though with some reservations.

[Dhanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting read as someone with little background knowledge on the literacy gaps other than that they exist. i liked reading about the different curricula and the classroom implications observed by the author. it was the missing link of connecting the research to the application of it by teachers. since the author had the singular thesis of integrating content into early elementary curricula, it felt very pointed and a bit like beating a dead horse. overall, i did learn a lot about the different elements that contribute to the literacy/knowledge gap.

[Catherine Pruden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned so much from this book but it did get repetitive. i have had so many interesting convos about the content of this book though!

[Cary Giese · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thesis of this book is that, in the United States today, the guiding early grades method(s) of how to teach reading is wrong!

Today’s principle is: “through the third grade children need to spend their time “learning to read” before they can progress to “reading to learn.”

The author believes that the guidance is in error.

The author, Natalie Wexler, is an education journalist who’s work has appeared in The NY Times, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post etc. She spent extensive time in various classrooms, talked to the myriad “experts” many of whom unhelpfully disagreed with each other. The book documents the experts and their varying opinions.

Note: (Google the author’s resume, it is impressive.)

She became convinced that learning occurs better when students connect new information to information they already know! She believes that students from poor households and students for which English is a second language suffer in comparison with children from households where knowledge and experiences are richer. Those students more easily relate words they are learning to read with what they already know. Consequently they learn to read faster, better and they remember more of what they’ve read.

Her second insight is that if reading is not learned in context with knowledge they already knew, then development in later grades suffers, perpetuating the disadvantages for those students in their later life. Access to good jobs and college is diminished!

Schools who have tried this knowledge-based teaching of reading have so far achieved great results. Writing, analysis, and student-confidence improve.

Even if adopted by most school districts, achieving adoption will be paced by those who will politically debate and/or resist curricula choices, other teacher and administration resistance, and teacher training and experience with the new teaching methods now required.

It is important that our educators conclude if this method can “even the opportunity field,” and if they believe so, how to develop a plan for rapid roll-out!

Also, free pre-school for low income students become even more important! (If they teach reading within a knowledge dynamic)

Ask your local superintendent of schools what she/he thinks about these ideas and what her/his policy will be?

Follow up!

[Alexis · Rating 1 out of 5]

A maddening and painfully repetitive read that I am truly surprised I finished. Prior to reading, I was inclined to believe the author's thesis--that elementary schools should focus on science and social studies content over "strategies" to boost reading and writing performance--out of a rejection of the status quo. However, the author's complete lack of interest in rigorous research and failure to consider any serious challenges to the approach (other than a half-hearted suggestion that it may take a few years to work) actually made me less inclined to accept it. She relies on just two studies--both well-known in education, one fairly flawed, the other reasonable but not sufficient on its own--to "prove" her philosophy. Her anecdotal examples are sometimes suspect, she goes on digressions into phonics vs. balanced literacy that seem irrelevant to her core thesis, she repeatedly vilifies certain educators and she has a habit of making wild claims without justification. She even briefly admits that her chosen approach lacks proof points, but goes on to explain why she believes it should be implemented on a large scale regardless.

Obvious questions she fails to address include:
*Do rising test scores as a result of increased cultural literacy indicate improved reading skills or flawed tests?
*Do schools have a responsibility to teach students to understand texts on topics they are unfamiliar with?
*What happens when students forget the information they've learned? She offers a vague suggestion that the method will still work, but the one good study she cites may contradict this.
*How should schools teach fiction?

Overall, I was very disappointed

[Lindsay G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me summarize this book for you:

Content-rich curriculum = GOOD
Skills-based curriculum = BAD

THE END. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Ok but in all reality- this book had a lot of promise. It was interesting… until it wasn’t. Then after finishing the book I found myself saddened that I wasted my time listening to this on audio, because it really could have been summarized into a much shorter narrative.

In addition, did Wit and Wisdom sponsor this book? Because she mentions it a lot at the end like it’s the solution. That was bothersome to me and cheapened the entire book. Nothing against Wit and Wisdom, but it seemed like a commercial for the curriculum at the end.

Two stars comes from my anger that this wasted my time. The writing was ok. I don’t know how this is averaging 4.20 on Goodreads right now.

Did I mention I have my Masters in Education?

[Holly Mueller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book because I do think there are some valuable take-aways. I agree with the fact that building children's knowledge is extremely important and that even very young children love learning about history, science, math, and geography. However, I was taken aback at the attacks on student choice, Lucy Calkins's Units of Study, guided reading, and student-centered learning. In this age of science of reading vs. reading workshop/guided reading and pendulum swings (I guess every age has experienced polarization in education), there has to be some great teaching somewhere in the middle - pulling some wisdom from several approaches. One of the reasons I love Kate Roberts's A Novel Approach is because she balances reading instructional strategies in her approach. While I will recommend this book to teachers and educators, I will throw in a few reservations.

[Jania Hoover · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understood the premise but this book was much longer than it needed to be to get the point across.

That being said, as a high school social studies teacher, I’ve witnessed firsthand a generation of kids that grew up with occasional social studies/science classes. Today, a student (11th grade) referred to the Underground Railroad as a network of tunnels.

I 100% agree that students need to know stuff before they can analyze it. Hitting them with upper level texts when they don’t have the background can contribute to disengagement and low achievement in high school.

I’m not sure what the solution is though. I wish there were more practical solutions in Wexler’s text. I do use the Writing Revolution though. That book is amazingly practical.

[Eric Kalenze · Rating 4 out of 5]

As this book deals with issues I've been familiar with and following for well over a decade, I wasn't surprised by much in it.

For the issues it covers, though, it may well be the best introduction I could have imagined. It is highly rational, identifiable, and readable--and to a degree I can't recall ever seeing in an education-improvement title.

With such a book now available, my big hope is that the ideas Wexler covers will reach more people, open more eyes, and serve as a gateway to even deeper learning.

[Isabella González · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing things makes you a better reader.

This is the main idea of this book on the effect of background knowledge toward reading comprehension, which is an outcome of learning about things. Comprehension is not a skill that can be isolated and taught.

This book also provides a good history of the past 20 years of education in the United States if you haven't been inside an elementary school. If you have, it will all be familiar: the 15-minute rotation on "centers," the iPads, the emphasis on personal narrative and leveled books, the focus on "skills," etc. My mom is an elementary school teacher, but it was pretty shocking to find out that other elementary school teachers believe history and science are developmentally inappropriate before 3rd grade. Because I remember learning history and science in Kindergarten through 2nd grade, like George Washington, the solar system, Martin Luther King Jr, the water table? Was it all a dream?! I had to stop the audiobook and discuss with ChatGPT which explained, "You're not missing a secret syllogism here — the 'history is developmentally inappropriate for K–2' thing isn't a clean logical consequence of Jean Piaget. It's more like a game of telephone where his ideas mashed together with 1960s-80s progressive ed trends, then reinforced by 2000s-10s testing and reading-skills culture."

Just like teaching phonics, this is one of those things that is so blindingly obvious --Have these teachers been around kids? They love history and science!-- that it feels like 20th-century Schools of Education were dominated by cult-like beliefs and behaviors. We lived in Texas, in the era when phonics was still on the Republican Party platform, so we weren't exposed to these ideas. This is the largest anti-science movement in the Democratic Party.

I read the recent article "America is Sliding Toward Illiteracy" in The Atlantic by Idrees Kahloon. I sighed audibly and with recognition when I read the quote, "The same people who are absolutely outraged about what" Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "is doing on vaccines are untroubled by just ignoring science when it comes to literacy."

A lot of the issues in this book are shockingly current and I've been enjoying a lot of the jeremiads in the other reviews that this book is concealing a right-wing agenda to remove authentic children's literature from classrooms and enforce a white-supremacist history curriculum on the helpless and unsuspecting Hispanic/Latino majority. Personally, I enjoy read-alouds of "Too Many Tamales" as much as the next Mexican, but we need to teach little Mexican boys and girls how to read and yes, even the Eurocentric stories like Betsy Ross and her flag, or we're going to be totally lost with popular culture references and be even more marginalized. Knowing things makes you a better reader!

[Amber Streeter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened my eyes to many misconceptions I held about education as a whole, many of which I sadly learned in college. I learned that there’s little scientific basis of the different learning styles (which I remember feeling extremely skeptical about while studying), whole language approaches to reading, and even teaching “reading comprehension skills” apart from content. Reading is not a subject: reading tests don’t assess a student’s ability to decode words, they assess a student’s background knowledge in the topic of the writing sample. I echo many of the frustrations voiced in this book: it sucks the joy out of teaching when your content is skills-based instead of knowledge-based. It’s boring for teachers and boring for students. Also, this book shed light on the absolutely frustrating fact that a huge part of the education system’s issues in the US is a result of an inability to reach a bipartisan compromise on content and materials used in schools and the role that political divide plays in disadvantaging children in our schools. Teachers are learning outdated ideas about teaching and missing out on what I think is the most joyful revelation: kids want to, and benefit most from, learning actual content about history and science and other social science topics. This book informed me on what it’s important to fight for in curriculum as an educator. Instead of fumbling for reasons to teach what feels the most beneficial and right, now I feel confident after reading this book about where to point when looking for ways to make our society more equitable in regards to children’s access to education.