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

by Natalie Wexler

Avery, 2019

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Wexler's take home message is that cognitive science tells us again and again that the most important element to good reading comprehension is background knowledge--vocabulary and prior familiarity with the topic. Students need content-rich curricula to succeed. I really enjoyed this work and have summarized it below.

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Part I The Way We Teach Now: All You Need Is Skills

In the opening chapters of this book, Wexler explains the widely held (but not evidenced based) belief that “abstract” topics like history and science beyond simple experiments are not developmentally appropriate before 3rd or 4th grade and so are not built into curricula in meaningful ways. This is largely a legacy of Piaget, although it probably isn’t totally fair to him either. This lack of organized content, however, perpetuates the “knowledge gap,” the amount of background information students come to learning with. While this background knowledge usually comes directly from the home family, students who are lacking it are not getting “caught up” at school, because this is exactly the information NOT being taught. Cognitive science shows that knowledge “sticks” to knowledge and so previous background information is a key predictor of success in terms of reading comprehension and many other areas of learning.

An interesting note that education experts usually consider elementary ed as going well, while high school is seen as the place where it all falls apart (36). But herein is exactly the manifestation of the knowledge gap—the reading comprehension and critical thinking skills that were actually never well acquired in upper elementary/middle school, because of the knowledge gap, now come to home to roost with the sophisticated textual material of high school.

Wexler draws on the work of Daniel Willingham (45), which we have reviewed elsewhere. She notes a point he makes—“reading strategies” which are meta-cognitive techniques that students are meant to use consciously as they read, are somewhat helpful in understanding a particular text, but they are not so helpful as to warrant daily practice and endless repetition. Instead that time should be devoted to building subject knowledge (56).

Reflecting on the history of teaching reading, Wexler visits Flesch’s attempt in the 50s to point out the failure of memorizing whole words with the help of common repetitive readers like Dick and Jane in his famous book, Why Johnny Can’t Read. The Reading Wars that followed in the next decades, culminating in the 90s, pitted “whole language” (Frank Smith) or, later, “balanced literacy,” against a more phonics-based approach (Jeanne Chall). Cognitive scientists now say that decoding—the part that requires phonics—is an essential step in the process of making meaning, which is the whole goal of reading (66). The end of the century saw political debate between the two camps, culminating with George W. Bush’s Reading First program to adopt phonic-based curricula. However, it was not renewed in 2008 because studies showed it was not improving comprehension (71).

Education Reform in recent decades has conflicting views on this issue. Examples from NYC, the implementation of Common Core, charter enterprises, etc. are brought to bear to show the confusing relationship between teaching “skills” based approach to comprehension and a content-driven curriculum. The role of “teacher effectiveness” is also unclear as “effective” teachers continue to produce problematic test results with the implementation of more rigorous CC testing. Where some point to content-based approaches, elementary is often overlooked, so the knowledge gap is not getting specifically addressed. Doug Lemov, who changed camps, writes about building student knowledge—content-rich curricula that progress logically across grade levels.

Many recent initiatives characterize current education reform: growth mind-set, health-care hubs, mental wellness, SEL, restorative justice, project-based learning. Wexler points out (and I agree), that for something like PBL to be worthwhile and effective, the teacher must be extremely capable to direct students. Especially for students already suffering from the knowledge gap, these kinds of projects can be ineffective (119). The concept of “personalized learning,” for example should be thought of as a delivery mechanism and not a content-based solution.

Part II How We Got Here: The History Behind the Content-Free Curriculum

Rousseau and the Romantics profoundly influenced American education. The idea that children should discover things on their own, follow their natural curiosities was the beginning of “child-centered” thinking. And so Horace Mann trained his new cadre of female teachers to be nurturing and less subject-matter based. The Progressive education movement, and it’s founder John Dewey, thought that school should build “progressively,” and in fact that only some students should progress to certain academic courses, while others should move on to vocational tracks. In his Laboratory School children engaged in what we would now call PBL and followed their own paths, but his school was small, carefully monitored, and had students from families of highly educated parents. The mid-century moved away from history and subject matter rigor and focused more on civic lessons like family, neighborhood and self-esteem. At the youngest levels, the “open classroom” model reached a floruit in the 60s and early 70s. (My preschool!) By the 80s Piaget’s ideas were de rigueur, and particularly affected teacher-training programs.

But clouds were on the horizon. SAT scores steadily declined. Pedagogy was still holding on to basically the same child-centered progressive ideas as the pre-war era, and which would become “constructivism” in which students must be active participants in constructing their own knowledge. Plus, consider the use and misuse of Bloom’s taxonomy. Rather than the “bottom of the pyramid” being eliminated or passed over quickly, Bloom actually advocated that the “bottom” tasks are NECESSARY for the completion of the higher-level ones. And that analysis or evaluation can never happen without solid knowledge and understanding. And cognitive science agrees.

And so in the 80s and next decades, the argument over content became heated and political. Wexler recounts the story of E.D. Hirsch’s work dealing with explicitly listing content that would close the gap. But this explicit list draws great political ire—who gets to decide what is on it and what facts, people and events are included or not. Ironically, Hirsch, is a far-leftist who describes himself as practically a socialist, and horrified that the right is pleased with his list (151). His attempt to define “cultural literacy” was meant to identify a way to remedy the knowledge gap, to allow for disadvantaged students to have the background knowledge that their more affluent peers had. But instead, it has come to be seen as a white, Eurocentric “list” of traditional cultural achievements. This fight over content standards continued into the political area of the (HW) Bush and Clinton Administrations. Wexler tries to differentiate by those on the right who were arguing for content based on American superiority and people like Hirsch who were trying to articulate the kinds of shared cultural literacy that accounts (in its lack) for the knowledge gap (160).

Part III How We Can Change: Creating and Delivering a Content-Focused Curriculum

In the mid-2000s the push came to create “common” standards that would show competency across state-test assessments. These standards would not contain content—to avoid previous mistakes—but would deal in skills, and start with reading and math, and they would be voluntary (if incentivized) for states to adopt. One aspect that was most taken up by teachers, though perhaps not in the way intended, was putting complex texts in front of students on a regular basis. However, because the execution is lacking, this has been a mess. Lack of clarity from both the (perhaps good) intentions of the crafters, plus uneven execution in the classroom had made the concept seem off base. But what happens if complex texts and close reading are delivered well and appropriately with a combination of the other The “building knowledge” component which was meant to be a clear part of Common Core has been obscured (184).

Wexler describes an initiative in Washoe where educators experimented with more difficult texts even for lower-level reading students, rather than focusing on drilling skills. The initial experiments were surprisingly successful with “underperforming” students making critical connections with meaning when exposed to texts previously deemed too advanced for them. David Coleman advanced this theory that close reading was a way of leveling the playing field (203). Other examples suggest that adopting content-rich curricula also can address segregated outcomes in schools where parents of on-grade performing students don’t want their kids practicing “skills” they already have rather than learning strong content.

Calkins and Hochman see writing as an important area which has been somewhat overlooked by the research in favor of reading. But writing has all sorts of benefits to memory, understanding and critical thinking. Calkins favors “writers’ workshops” within the balanced-literacy movement. Students need enough content in order to have enough material to learn more advanced writing. So assigning writing based on what they are learning in other subjects makes more sense than writing “skills” in the absence of context. However, the complexities of writing, such as the way written English is different than spoken, were not clearly being taught.

Common Core was meant in part to address writing, which has been somewhat ignored during the NCLB which was focused on reading and math. It was also meant to move writing away from the inordinate focus on the personal narrative. Calkins tries to have students spend several weeks on the same topic in order to actually learn some of content. Hochman’s method, The Writing Revolution, starts at sentence level and combines teaching content with writing skills. One area of disagreement is over the Common Core’s requirements of page number benchmarks, regardless of quality. In another example, teachers discuss the difficulty of having curriculum that does not build across grade levels or even within grade level (241).

In the teens, New York began a process to secure Race to the Top funding which involved a massive overhaul of the curriculum, including Core Knowledge for K-2. One of the issues was open access and the NY curriculum site began something of a frenzy of other states and districts using the content. This affected the textbook industry as similar initiatives have produced better aligned material. Teachers have been regularly using Googld or Pintrest or TpT (247). This is double-edged: can introduce huge numbers of teachers to new ways of teaching, but can also lead to just a crap shoot of finding things on the internet. Developed curricula like Core Knowledge exposes children to massive amounts of information using its own texts that keep track of concepts and vocabulary over the year and across grades. However, some teachers don’t like that they can’t use their favorite “authentic” texts. Another obstacle is the lingering impression that Hirsch is too Eurocentric, however individual curricula have incorporated more diverse material. Some have created content based approaches that do use selected authentic texts, such as Wit & Wisdom, and some get close to balanced literacy, like American Reading Company, in which authentic texts are grouped by topic and reading level (249). There is a next-level challenge as well that deals with the implementation of curricula. Teachers have mixed reactions to new trainings and responding to real or perceived expectations of tests, especially if their performance evaluations is tied to testing. Even with good intentions, misperceptions continue—in Louisiana, about three quarters of teachers incorrectly believed that CC requires testing students on their individual reading levels and prioritizing skills over content (252), but they did uncouple teacher evaluations from test scores during the implementation.

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