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THE KNOWLEDGE GAP

The hidden cause of america's broken education system--and how to fix it.

by Natalie Wexler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2019

An informative analysis of elementary education that highlights pervasive problems.

Education journalist Wexler (co-author: The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades , 2017, etc.) mounts a compelling critique of American elementary schools, which, she argues, focus exclusively—and futilely—on boosting reading and math test scores, ignoring social studies, history, and science.

As a reaction to the drilling and rote memorization that characterized 19th-century public schools, child-centered progressive education systems began to emphasize “hand-on activities” that would respond to students’ interests and minimize teachers’ roles in “the transmission of knowledge.” By the mid-20th century, the “bitter, long-running conflict known as the Reading Wars” pitted those who supported teaching phonics against “whole language” theorists who believe that children will “naturally pick up the ability to read and write if allowed to choose books and topics that interest them.” Neither approach accounts for content. Wexler distinguishes between decoding, which she asserts can best be taught by “systematic phonics,” and comprehension, which she finds is now taught by systematic strategies—finding the main idea, summarizing—rather than by building a student’s knowledge base. The author finds this lack of teacher-directed knowledge egregious: There is little evidence that practicing skills improves test scores. In contrast, “nine countries that consistently outrank the United States on international assessments all provide their students with a comprehensive, content-rich curricula.” Comprehension is related not to skills but to a student’s familiarity with a subject, Wexler argues, and yet some educators believe that teaching history to young children is “developmentally inappropriate.” Besides citing various studies, the author offers vivid anecdotal evidence from classroom observation of a content-rich curriculum. Like E.D. Hirsch, whose 1987 book Cultural Literacy unleashed “a political firestorm,” Wexler admits the considerable challenge of creating curricula that foster critical thinking abilities, build logically from grade to grade, reflect “a diversity of viewpoints” with texts that “appeal to different constituencies,” and can be assessed by “general knowledge tests.”

Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-7352-1355-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Avery

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019

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INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION

The decline, the deception, the dogmas.

by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1993

American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993

ISBN: 0-02-930330-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992

More by Thomas Sowell

BOOK REVIEW

by Thomas Sowell

THE ABOLITION OF MAN

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1947

The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.

Pub Date: April 8, 1947

ISBN: 1609421477

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947

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by C.S. Lewis

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The Lost Children of E.D. Hirsch

Robert Pondiscio

The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system — and how to fix it by Natalie Wexler Avery, 2019, $27, 336 pages

As reviewed by Robert Pondiscio

The most important point raised in Natalie Wexler’s new book The Knowledge Gap is nearly an afterthought. It’s in the book’s epilogue. After a compelling, book-length argument in favor of offering a knowledge-rich education to every child and documenting our frustrating lack of progress in doing so—to raise reading achievement, promote justice, even, she suggests, to end school segregation—the author makes a surprising observation.

“I’d love to point to a school district, or even a single school, and say: This is how it should be done,” Wexler writes. “Unfortunately, I have yet to see an American school that consistently combines a focus on content with an instructional method that fully exploits the potential of writing to build knowledge and critical thinking abilities for every child.”

That is one hell of an indictment of American education, and to Wexler’s credit, a brave one, since arguably it calls into question the mission of her thoroughly reported and briskly readable book. On the one hand, the case for content cannot be made too often or too emphatically, and Wexler does it well. By setting so much of the book in actual classrooms among real teachers and children she does E.D. Hirsch, Jr. better than Hirsch himself. However, it is telling—and a little depressing—that more that 30 years after Hirsch burst nearly by accident onto best-seller lists with Cultural Literacy, the urtext in the knowledge-rich schooling canon, Wexler cannot name a single school or district doing it right. Thus The Knowledge Gap cannot be viewed as a wake up call for American education. The alarm has been ringing for more than three decades. We have hit the snooze bar and rolled over. And that’s, well… alarming.

“It’s hard to understand why a problem as fundamental and pervasive as the lack of content in elementary school—and in some cases, middle school as well—has gone unnoticed for so long,” Wexler writes. This is my only significant point of disagreement with the author. The lack of content has not gone unnoticed. It’s gone unaddressed.

If the capacity and will to get this right existed, there should be not one example of schools and districts who are implementing a knowledge-rich curriculum well and faithfully. There should be lots of them .

Washoe County, Nevada was one such example and Wexler devotes a fascinating chapter to the Core Task Implementation Project, or CTIP, in Reno—a grassroots, teacher-led initiative that emerged almost organically following the state’s adoption of Common Core, far from well-funded battles over the standards in Washington, and away from the glare of media coverage. “Keeping CTIP going felt like a game of whack-a-mole: one constituency would be placated, but then another would pop up with objections,” Wexler writes. Crucially, resistance to curriculum and content wasn’t the issue. “The problem was more that the district kept undertaking new initiatives, some of which seemed to be working at cross-purposes, and those initiatives took precedence over CTIP.” Sobering stuff but illuminating: Even with awareness of the need for knowledge, committed personnel, a reasonable level of administrative support and promising results, it still fell apart. Having worked for Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation, I have seen this myself. Today there is a model school. Tomorrow there’s a leadership change, a new initiative, or staff exodus. Change is hard. Maintaining it is harder still.

Wexler takes care not to blame teachers. The idea of teaching reading comprehension as a set of discrete skills rather than an effect of knowledge and vocabulary, for example, is “simply the water they’ve been swimming in, so universal and taken for granted they don’t question or even notice it.” That is both correct and unsatisfying. At some point—perhaps now —teachers, the administrators who hire them, the colleges that train them, districts, charter management organizations and whole states simply must raise their level of sophistication about all this. There is no other way forward at scale. It is lovely if individual teachers, and even entire schools and districts get this (however briefly) but only insofar as this contributes to the only thing that can close the knowledge gap: a wholesale change in the culture of education and greater sophistication about practice, reinforced by thoughtful policy that rewards a patient investment in knowledge. Nothing else will do.

Without question there is greater appreciation for the essential role of background knowledge in reading comprehension than in 1987, when Cultural Literacy spent six months on the New York Times best-seller list. Where there used to be none, there are several English Language Arts curricula, both commercially available and freely accessible “open educational resources” designed to build knowledge coherently, cumulatively, and sequentially, such as Great Minds’ “Wit and Wisdom,” and, from Hirsch’s own nonprofit organization, “Core Knowledge Language Arts.” So there is awareness, even progress, just not as much as we intellectual sons and daughters of Hirsch would like. Wexler notes that early elementary teachers “spend an average of only sixteen minutes a day on social studies and nineteen on science.” A nation that understood the clear and compelling links between background knowledge and literacy that she unpacks would be embarrassed by these figures and demand more: not just more history and science, but more art, music and the full range of enlivening content that would “restore elementary school teachers to their rightful place as guides to the world” as David Coleman winningly puts it.

“Teachers efforts will bear fruit only if they understand what to look for,” Wexler observes. Alas, not even then. For the full benefits of a knowledge and language rich education to reach its full flower, it requires not one teacher to understand this, but all of them , and for them to coordinate their efforts to guard against gaps and repetitions. I’m less than sanguine this is in the offing, which is why school choice has moved to the top of my own preferred policy options. Better for advocates of knowledge-rich schooling like Wexler and like me to convince one school to do it right than to spend the next 30 years pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back over dedicated and earnest educators like the folks in Washoe. If simple logic and the vast weight of cognitive science cannot inspire changes in practice, perhaps successful models might generate greater demand. School choice is not mentioned as a lever for change in The Knowledge Gap , although Wexler rightly takes issue with ed reformer and charter operators who have been historically no less culpable than “status quo” educators in overlooking the evidence on the importance of knowledge. She notes that some charter management organizations, including KIPP, Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First “noticed that a few schools with a more content-focused approach hadn’t suffered the same drop [on more rigorous Common Core aligned tests starting in 2013]. So they began retooling their elementary curricula to focus more on content,” she writes, another indicator that the essential role of knowledge as a driver of student outcomes has not gone “unnoticed.”

Let me close by praising Wexler’s work, for it is praiseworthy, and make it clear that she has made a first-rate case for content. We are in passionate agreement on the need for a knowledge-rich curriculum for all children, particularly the disadvantaged. If you are among the uninitiated on the value of content knowledge for kids, buy a copy. If you’re already among the true believers, buy two copies and put them in the hands persuadable educators. But young ones, please. As Max Planck observed of science, education advances one funeral at a time.

The Knowledge Gap is first-rate addition to the literature in support of content-rich curriculum. It is not criticism to wish it could also be the last.

Robert Pondiscio is senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and author of How The Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice , to be published September 10, 2019 by Avery .

This article appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of Education Next . Suggested citation format:

Pondiscio, R. (2020). The Lost Children of Hirsch: Natalie Wexler’s first-rate argument for content-rich curriculum . Education Next , 20(1), 81-82.

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Vol. 24, No. 2

We Recommend You Read

New ‘Knowledge Mapping’ Tool Evaluates English Language Arts Curricula

by Robert Pondiscio

A Closer Look at Improving Student Engagement by Letting Students Choose Their Tasks

If You Want a Content-Rich Curriculum for All, Don’t Ignore School Choice

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

Natalie wexler. avery, $27 (336p) isbn 978-0-7352-1355-5.

Reviewed on: 06/17/2019

Genre: Nonfiction

Paperback - 352 pages - 978-0-7352-1356-2

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The Knowledge Gap

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.

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Ms. Cotton's Corner

Resources and insights to grow your teaching, the knowledge gap – a book review.

Click to jump right to these sections in this post.

What is the Knowledge Gap?

Many years ago, I sat in a meeting with my fourth grade colleagues and we analyzed the scores from the previous years’ standardized test. To everyone’s surprise, my class had far surpassed the other classes on the fiction reading portion of the text. When we anaylzed it even further, we realized that my classes’ high scores were mostly attributable to one passage – an excerpt from Gary Soto’s The Skirt . When my colleagues asked how I had achieved such high scores, I was at a loss. I didn’t know. Now I know.

In her book, The Knowledge Gap , Natalie Wexler explores the importance of background knowledge and vocabulary in comprehension. My experience with that standardized test mirrors some of the education research that she cites in the book. First, Gary Soto is a poet that I admire, and my students and I had read and analyzed some of the poems in his book, A Fire in My Hands . That experience probably gave them familiarity with his themes, symbolism and style, which helped them understand the text on the test. Second, because I speak Spanish, Hispanic students were generally put into my classroom. The Skirt is written in English, but the main character is from Mexico, and the text is sprinkled with Spanish words. My students had the relevant Spanish vocabulary to understand that text. Even my English speakers, because of their exposure to his poetry, had strategies for using context to decipher Spanish words. Even though many of my students’ reading levels were below grade level, their background knowledge and vocabulary compensated, and resulted in high comprehension of that text, and therefore, higher scores on the test.

Early in the book (Chapter 2), Natalie Wexler cites two studies that directly relate to my experience. One, The Baseball Study by Recht and Leslie , showed that middle school students with high knowledge of baseball, but a low reading level had higher comprehension of a baseball text than students with a high reading level but a low knowledge of baseball. Click here to read the study , published in 1988 in the Journal of Educational Psychology. Natalie Wexler also cites a study of preschoolers’ comprehension. In this study , published in 2014 in Reading Psychology, scientists found no difference between the comprehension of students from low socio-economic familes and students from wealthier families when background knowledge and vocabulary were the same. The two studies, when taken together, form the backbone of Nataile Wexler’s thesis – we are creating the achievement gap by focusing too much time on reading instruction that does not include knowlege building. In other words, the knowledge gap IS the achievement gap.

The Knowledge Gap IS the Achievement Gap.

But what about Reading Strategy Instruction?

Most of us have spent years learning about reading strategies and how to teach them in the hopes that a thorough grounding in reading strategies would result in higher comprehension. We have seen studies that show strategy instruction boosts scores on comprehension tests. So, where does that fit into this picture? Wexler addresses this question in Chapter 3. According to Daniel Willingham, one of the cognitive psychologists she cites frequently, strategies help students understand that the goal of reading is comprehension, not decoding. Strategy instruction can also remind students to check for understanding. So, strategy instruction can be beneficial, but it is not sufficient. According to Willingham and Wexler, elementary schools today have gotten the balance wrong. We are spending too much time on strategy instruction, and not enough time building vocabulary and background knowledge.

“Nearly all teachers have come to see comprehension not as something that arises naturally with sufficient information, as cognitive scientists have concluded, but rather as a set of strategies that need to be taught explicitly. Many dedicated and well-intentioned teachers have worked their tails off trying to teach reading, but because they’ve been given the wrong information about how to do it, or in some cases none at all, the results have been disastrous, both for their students and for society as a whole.” Natalie Wexler in The Knowledge Gap, chapter 3

This great video from Daniel Willingham illustrates that point beautifully.

Does The Knowledge Gap correlate with Science of Reading?

The short answer is, yes, totally. The Knowledge Gap is based on scientific research done by cognitive psychologists like Daniel Willingham as well as instructional research done by education professionals like Timothy Shanahan. In my last blog post , I let you know that one of my filters is making sure that any changes I make in my classroom are based on brain research AND research on effective instruction. This book definitely draws on a wide variety of scientific research as Wexler explores her thesis.

The Science of Reading is a broad effort to bring together science and instruction. It is often equated with systematic phonics, and that is a component of reading instruction that has been well validated through a lot of research. But there is research that shows that systematic phonics isn’t enough. In The Knowledge Gap , Wexler explores how knowledge and vocabulary are critical to comprehension. In chapter 4 she endorses systematic phonics, but argues that it isn’t sufficient.

“Reading, it is generally agreed, is all about making meaning. Cognitive scientists would say that decoding – the part of reading for which phonemic awareness and phonics skills are essential – is a necessary stepping-stone in the process of making meaning from written text…. It’s true that some children will learn to read without systematic phonics instruction – probably somewhere between half and a third, according to reading experts. But all children can benefit from it, and many won’t learn to decode well without it.” -The Knowledge Gap, chapter 4

So, What Does This Mean for My Classroom?

The last part of the book focuses on Wexler’s thoughts on reform. This is where the book fell down for me. The recommendations are fairly generic. She has a high regard for curricula like Core Knowledge and Engage NY, both open source and availabe for free. She would like to see fewer district initiatives and more sustained focus on system-wide shifts over time toward content-rich curricula. She recommends close reading of text and anlytical writing. And she mentions an effort in Lousiana to require certain texts each year, and then base the state test on those texts, ensuring that all Lousiana students share a common curriculum. All of these are interesting ideas, but not particularly useful when I face my kindergarteners tomorrow.

Of course, Wexler is an education journalist. Her degrees are in history and the law, not instruction. So it’s probably reasonable for her to use her journalist expertise to gather all of the sources together in one book, and then allow education experts to turn those insights into classroom practice. She is the co-author of The Writing Revolution , which is currently waiting for me on my bedside table, and seems like it will be more practical than theoretical.

Who Should Read This Book?

I recommend this book for every elementary teacher and administrator who wants to understand how to raise reading achievement in their school. I think the book is especially important for primary teachers. Most primary classrooms in the United States spend the majority of the day teaching reading (62% of the day according to some estimates), and it seems to be working just fine. When primary teachers give reading tests like the DRA and BAS, most students do well. But, without a focus on building knowledge in the primary grades, comprehension slows down and reading achievement decreases in upper grades. That’s when the cracks start to appear. But because the kids are out of our classrooms by that point, we primary teachers don’t notice the change.

I’ve spent the past 4 years teaching fifth grade, and this year I moved to kindergarten, in part because I wanted to figure out why reading achievement shifted so dramatically from primary grades to intermediate grades in my school. I think this is a huge part of the reason, so as a primary teacher, I am working to bring systematic phonics AND content learning to my kindergarteners. I think any primary teacher who reads The Knowledge Gap will be ready to come along on that journey with me, as we work to help our readers succeed today AND tomorrow.

I give The Knowledge Gap five stars, and it’s on the top shelf of my book case. I have already reread many parts of the book, and I am sure that I will be reaching for it often as I figure out how to shift my classroom and help my students become proficient readers.

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The Knowledge Gap

The hidden cause of america's broken education system--and how to fix it.

• 4.9 • 12 Ratings

Publisher Description

“Essential reading for teachers, education administrators, and policymakers alike.” — STARRED Library Journal The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis 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.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUL 1, 2019

In this illuminating study of the philosophies and practices of the American education system, education journalist Wexler (The Writing Revolution) argues that low student test scores result from a mistaken emphasis at the elementary level on context-free reading skills and strategies rather than content-rich curricula that give students "a body of knowledge about the world." Test scores improve and income-related test gaps narrow, Wexler finds, when kids start learning history, science, and social studies in kindergarten. Wexler examines different pieces of the problem, including deficiencies in teacher training (teachers aren't taught the cognitive psychology of how people learn) and the use of ineffective attempted compromises such as balanced literacy (an approach that attempts to "balance" teaching full-word recognition and phonics). Wexler spends a year inside Washington, D.C., classrooms, observing that skills-based, content-averse lessons actually impede learning, while students tackling content-rich Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum's lesson blocks on ancient Mesopotamia, Greek myths, and American history demonstrated enormous vocabularies, high engagement, and the ability to make insightful connections. Wexler presents content-oriented curricula as an obvious remedy that can be embraced by teachers, parents, and administrators who agree that "education is essential if democracy is going to function." This thought-provoking take on curricular reform is well-supported; it's less abrasive and perhaps more persuasive than earlier calls for this kind of reform.

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Book review: The Knowledge Gap

The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system - and how to fix it

Author: Natalie Wexler Publisher: Avery Publishing Group Details: £22.23, 316pp ISBN: 978-0735213555

High-stakes accountability is causing anxiety among teachers and students. Subjects other than maths and English are being cut from the curriculum because they aren’t tested.

Professional-development gurus tell teachers that, if children aren’t succeeding, it’s the teachers’ fault for not having high enough expectations . And teachers and educationalists are fervently debating the value of knowledge in the curriculum in a post-truth world. Recognise anything?

Natalie Wexler’s book The Knowledge Gap is a history of recent US education reform, but many of its issues will be uncannily familiar to UK readers.

Familiar issues in education

So too will the classroom vignettes that are dotted throughout the chapters. In one lesson Wexler observes, pupils learn about captions by writing their own beneath a picture of a goat. One pupil spells goat “goll”. Another complains that’s not how it’s spelled. The teacher intervenes and says: “That’s OK. That’s how he spells ‘goat’.”

Contrast that with a lesson Wexler observes where the class are following the core knowledge curriculum. The teacher reads pupils a passage about mummies in ancient Egypt, and the first question a pupil has is: “So, how do the mummies run?”

The teacher responds: “What you see on TV about people who come back to life - that’s made up. That’s fiction. We’re studying about what really happened.”

Dead white men

Critics of knowledge-based curricula often complain about how they privilege dead white men , and minimise the roles of marginalised groups.

But that’s to ignore two things. One: the way to deal with these issues is to correct the bias in the curriculum, not to remove knowledge from the curriculum. Two: a lot of the value of a knowledge-based curriculum comes from far less controversial, but still vital, issues: from telling pupils that “goat” is not spelled “goll”, that mummies don’t come back to life and place curses on people, and from establishing the valuable principle that neither your own instincts nor Hollywood films are a reliable guide to the world.

The great irony here, of course, is that the “that’s how he spells ‘goat’” type of relativism has largely been promoted by education academics on the left - but, in the US, its beneficiary has been the very unacademic and unleft Donald Trump, whose “alternative facts” could have come straight out of a post-modernist textbook.

More practically, many politicians and school administrators are wary of knowledge-based curricula not because of a high-minded commitment to philosophical relativism, but rather because of the daunting prospect of getting agreement about what knowledge should be taught.

A knowledge-based curriculum?

Wexler has bad and good news here. Yes, it can be hard to get people to agree, and often the arguments are toxic, ideological and performative. For example, in 1994, Lynne Cheney scuppered a genuinely bipartisan attempt to create a US history curriculum, in order to boost her husband Dick Cheney’s standing with US ultra-conservatives.

However, the good news is that agreement is possible. The latest advanced-placement US history curriculum did cause disagreements, but they were eventually resolved.

Under the leadership of John King, who went on to become Barack Obama’s education secretary, New York State developed the EngageNY curriculum, an open set of resources that teachers were free to download and adapt. This combination of top-down and bottom-up development is probably what is needed to improve education. Big institutions have the capacity to produce high-quality resources, but only teachers have the knowledge of their pupils to make the resources sing in the classroom.

Wexler tours a range of promising developments in New York, Washington DC, Nevada and Louisiana, which have the potential to bring about this change. For UK readers, some of these developments are relevant, although others depend a bit too much on understanding the minutiae of the US’ Common Core curriculum.

Teacher professional development

Wexler also shows the importance of high-quality professional development, not just resources. At one training session, the organisers proudly display examples of perfect pupil work. A teacher agrees that the writing is wonderful, but says that she is unable to get her pupils to achieve such a standard, even though she religiously follows the professional-development precepts. The organiser bluntly tells her that this is because she doesn’t have high enough expectations of her pupils.

But, as Wexler says, perhaps the issue is not teachers who lack high expectations, but professional-development programmes that lack a solid evidence base. The high-expectations mantra, while seemingly so uplifting, can become a way of blaming teachers for the failures of policymakers, administrators and educationalists. Indeed, it can even be a way of blaming disadvantaged pupils. As another character in the book says, discovery-based learning “creates situations in which students ultimately find themselves held accountable for knowing a set of rules about which no one has ever directly informed them”.

Is it possible to create a more inclusive and fairer education system? The Knowledge Gap shows the way.

Daisy Christodoulou is director of education at No More Marking and the author of  Making Good Progress?  and S even Myths About Education . She tweets  @daisychristo

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The Knowledge Gap

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• By: Natalie Wexler
• Narrated by: Natalie Wexler
• Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
• 4.7 out of 5 stars 4.7 (652 ratings)

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Publisher's summary

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.

• Unabridged Audiobook
• Categories: Education & Learning

Critic reviews

"Essential reading for teachers, education administrators, and policymakers alike." ( Library Journal starred review)

"Education journalist Wexler mounts a compelling critique of American elementary schools.... An informative analysis of elementary education that highlights pervasive problems." ( Kirkus Reviews )

"For parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the potential of education to brighten kids' futures, reading The Knowledge Gap will be an eye-opening experience. Through vivid classroom scenes and stories of would-be reformers, Natalie Wexler exposes a crucial aspect education that is often overlooked: In most American elementary schools, teachers are not given the training and support they need to provide deep, rich content - about history, social studies, science, language and the world around them. And students, especially vulnerable ones, suffer for it.” (Peg Tyre, author of The Good School: How Smart Parents Get Their Children the Education They Deserve )

"The knowledge gap is real, and its effects are profound. This book offers an accurate, engaging, and clear description of the problem and how to solve it. It’s a must-read for educators, parents and policy makers." (Dr. Judith C. Hochman, founder of The Writing Revolution; co-author, The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades )

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I enjoyed the history of current education.

This is a book full of information. I will need to listen again to gleen all of it.

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Educator approved

As an educator, this is what we have been saying for years. I’m fairly new in the field, but this is so validating to know people are working on a change and finally seeing it in schools. 2024, Minnesota.

This is what teachers have been saying for a long time! Well written and easy to understand, even my non-educational background husband enjoyed it on our vacation car trip!

• school lady

Must Read- all teachers, parents & administrators

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to be an expert or thinks they are an expert in reading instruction. This foundational knowledge will give you the background you need to make policy decisions and advocacy decisions. Our children deserve everyone to know this information.

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I highly recommend this book to all educators. It put into words things that I have been thinking for many years.

Must Read For Every Educator

This is a must read if you work in the education system. If you are tired of spinning your wheels to discover how to really help your student grow you need to read this. Warning… if you have been in education for a while you will be frustrated as you read and discover how you have been misguided by some very well known people in education.

Everyone invested in education should read

If you are a teacher, parent, whatever, a stakeholder in k-12 education in, this is an important read. I'm the book, Ms Wexler describes various teachers and their approaches to curriculum changes and how it has impacted student scoring. It also answers the question what's wrong with the education system in the US. I'll be putting her suggestions to use in my homeschool.

2 people found this helpful

• Diane Tarver

Completed this as a PD book study. So glad I did this as this gave me a new perspective for teaching.

Must read for teachers and parents!

I am both an elementary teacher and a parent of young children. This book brings to light enormous holes that are so excruciatingly common in schools. Every teacher and parent should read this book. Even more, administrators and government officials should read this book. Highly recommended!

Every educator must read this!!!!!!!!!

This is the most powerful book I have read in my 33 years of teaching. What is written about in this book, I have lived as an educator. It is so important for you to read for yourself! The science of reading and the nature of testing is something I have been so passionate about. This book hit the nail on the head and brought to the forefront the things that everyone is afraid to say, but those things MUST BE SAID!

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Kindergarten students start their day by reading books on the carpet in Mandy Sequin’s class at Stout Field Elementary School in Wayne Township, Indianapolis. (Stephanie Wang/Chalkbeat)

Want better readers? Spend less time teaching kids to find the main idea, ‘Knowledge Gap’ author Natalie Wexler argues

In the average public elementary school, third graders spend nearly two hours a day on reading instruction, according to a recent federal survey . That far outstrips any other subject, with math coming in second at around 70 minutes a day, and science and social studies getting about half an hour a day each.

Teachers may think this approach is the best way to improve students’ reading ability. But in her new book “The Knowledge Gap,” journalist Natalie Wexler argues against skimping on science and social studies and emphasizing specific reading skills. She says that this approach, paradoxically, hurts students’ ability to make sense of what they read. (Find an excerpt of the book here .)

She builds her case with cognitive science that suggests that once students have learned to sound out words — “decode” — the key to understanding a text is having solid background knowledge on the subject.

In other words, if you already know a lot about education, you’ll probably have an easier time making sense of articles in Chalkbeat than, say, in Foreign Policy.

The implication, Wexler says, is that schools should start teaching science and social studies content early and often. Wexler draws from the work of E.D. Hirsch, the University of Virginia professor and prominent advocate of these ideas.

But what knowledge — and whose knowledge — should be taught? And what does Wexler make of the fact that there are relatively few studies directly linking a content-rich curriculum to better academic outcomes? Chalkbeat asked Wexler that and more. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you walk me through the main thesis of the book?

The title “The Knowledge Gap” is a reference to the achievement gap, which is basically referring to the test score gap. And I’m particularly focusing on the gap between those students from the top end of the socioeconomic scale and those at the bottom end — and that gap is significant. It hasn’t really budged in 50 years, or maybe it’s gotten worse.

We’ve been looking at that gap as a gap in skills. American elementary schools, and to some extent middle schools, have long approached reading comprehension as though it’s a matter of teaching generally applicable skills, like let’s practice finding the main idea and let’s practice making inferences. The theory is, it doesn’t really matter what content the kids are using to practice those skills; if they just get good at those skills they will be able to apply them eventually to any text that’s put in front of them, whether it’s on a standardized test or in high school.

That approach has been intensified in the last 20 years by the advent of high-stakes reading tests, because it looks like they’re measuring those skills. So teachers, policymakers, reformers have all assumed we should just double down on teaching those skills.

The problem is that, as cognitive scientists have known for decades, the most important factor in reading comprehension is not generally applicable skills like finding the main idea — it’s how much knowledge and vocabulary the reader has relating to the topic. So if we really want to boost reading comprehension, we should be doing the opposite of what we’re doing — especially in schools where test scores are low — which is cutting subjects like social studies and science that could actually increase students’ knowledge of the world and instead spending more time on these reading comprehension skills.

The way that it’s related to this gap, the test score gap, is that kids from better-educated families pick up a lot of academic or sophisticated knowledge and vocabulary at home. But kids who are coming from less educated families rely on school to get that kind of knowledge, and they’re actually the least likely to get it there.

Why focus on elementary school? Because it seems like that same logic would also apply in later grades as well.

Well, the elementary school day has long been dominated by reading and has only gotten more so. The theory is that you teach kids reading comprehension in elementary school and then when they get to middle school and high school, they can start acquiring knowledge through their own reading. So the high school curriculum has more content. It always has.

The potential power of what we do in elementary school is huge. Kids at that age, especially early elementary grades, they’re eager to learn stuff. So it’s a tremendous wasted opportunity.

[Note: It’s hard to pin down clearly whether time spent on reading instruction has really grown. One survey of school districts in the wake of No Child Left Behind found that about a third reported cutting science or social studies, while a majority said they had ramped up time on reading. On the other hand, federal data, based on self reports from schools, shows that reading instruction has dominated elementary schools since at least the late ’80s , and there hasn’t been a clear upward trend since, or a downward one for science and social studies.]

In the book you write that elementary schools are where “the real problem has been hiding in plain sight.” But on the federal NAEP exam, we’ve actually seen the biggest gains on reading tests in early grades. For instance, since 2000, black fourth graders have gained 16 points on the NAEP, which is not a trivial number. Now, there haven’t been gains since 2009, but those earlier gains have sustained themselves. And so I think if I were just looking at the NAEP I would say, actually, in elementary school we’re doing OK, and we really need to focus on those later grades.

And you would not be alone. That is a frequent mistake, because just like elementary school books don’t assume as much background knowledge as high school level texts, elementary level standardized reading comprehension tests also don’t assume as much sophisticated background knowledge and vocabulary as high school level tests. But if you’re not planting the seeds in elementary schools, you’re not exposing kids to those more sophisticated concepts and more sophisticated vocabulary, they may well not be able to absorb that in high school.

That’s another thing about knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t just help you understand a reading passage. It also helps you absorb and retain information if you have an existing framework to fit it into. Or you could say knowledge is like Velcro — it sticks to other related knowledge. So if a kid encounters a word like “labyrinth” for the first time or a phrase like “Achilles heel” for the first time in 10th or 11th grade, you might explain it to the kid then, but it may not stick.

I think that the danger is we thought elementary school is the bright spot in education because we’ve looked at those rising test scores at the elementary level and we thought, OK, everything’s fine there. And we’ve looked at the stagnant test scores at the high school level and we thought OK, the problem’s really in high school, and that’s where we need to work to solve it. I won’t say it’s too late, but it’s just much much harder to solve the problem if you wait until high school.

In your book you say, “There aren’t yet any reliable studies showing that [a coherent knowledge-rich] curriculum will outperform either a skills-focused curriculum or a content-focused one that lacks coherence,” but “it’s reasonable to assume that’s the case.” The fact that there aren’t any reliable studies about this seems like a really big caveat at the heart of your book.

There is evidence that focusing on content can boost kids’ reading comprehension scores. They’re not randomized controlled studies, but there is some evidence of that. What is harder to find evidence of is that you need a curriculum that builds logically from one grade to the next. And that’s hard to get because kids move around, especially in lower income levels, and there aren’t that many schools implementing that kind of a curriculum.

One that comes to mind — there’s a curriculum called Bookworms, and there was a study of a school district that implemented that curriculum. After just one year of implementation, schools implementing that curriculum did better than demographically similar schools in the districts that weren’t implementing that curriculum.

You spend a lot of time in your book making the case that schools should teach kids content, but you spend less time describing what content exactly should be taught. That seems like a really important question, and I’m wondering if you can address that?

I don’t feel like it’s my role to prescribe what content should be taught. And certainly it’s not either realistic or maybe desirable to try to do that on a national scale in this country, where curriculum has historically been very much a matter of local control. But there are now, for the first time, several curricula out there that have defined bodies of knowledge to be transmitted to elementary school students. Districts, schools, states can look at those different curricula and see which one fits their needs.

I would think generally there are different bodies of knowledge that could be taught and there are different ways to teach them. But we need to think about what is it that we want kids to know when they get out of high school that will enable them to read and understand a newspaper or news report or to vote responsibly or serve on a jury responsibly. So there are certain basics I think we can all agree on.

You mention in the book the incident with E.D. Hirsch at a press conference in 1987 where he was rolling out the specific things that he thought should be taught, and a reporter asked him, is Cinco de Mayo on your list? And he said he didn’t know what that is. That raises the question of whose knowledge is being taught. And I think that’s one reason why some people might be skeptical about teaching knowledge and figuring out who is going to determine what knowledge is taught. I’m wondering your thoughts on that?

I think Hirsch’s argument was really misinterpreted and I think one reason for that was he made the mistake of being very specific about what should be taught. He appended this list of 5,000 words and phrases that every American should know to his book “Cultural Literacy.” And people assumed that he just sat back in his armchair and his tweed jacket, being an academic and an old white guy and thought, “Well, what is it that people should know? What do I think is important?” It’s really not what he did. He did an empirical study with some colleagues: What is the knowledge that is assumed by newspaper editors, by trial lawyers arguing before juries? It turns out that a lot of that knowledge is Eurocentric because we are still primarily a Western society.

Of course, things change. The body of knowledge and information that is taken for granted among those who have what is called cultural literacy — for lack of a better word, the elites — that does change, and E.D. Hirsch did recognize that. I think he thought it changed pretty slowly and it may have been changing faster in the last 30 years than it did in the previous 30 years. But the Core Knowledge Foundation has continued to test the waters of what is the knowledge that is assumed. Cinco de Mayo, now as compared to 1987, yeah, you would expect people to be familiar with that, and believe me, E.D. Hirsch is now familiar with what that is. That doesn’t mean that people don’t need to know what happened during the American Revolution and the Civil War. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not changing.

One issue there might be with surveying newspaper editors and talking to trial lawyers is that their conceptions of things that are important may be biased. Trial lawyers and newspaper editors likely are disproportionately white and disproportionately come from an affluent background.

It depends on how you define bias. We’re not talking about knowing the rules of playing polo. Sure, there are certain things that people from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to know. Some of those things are going to be important to functioning well in society and some of those things are not going to be. But we want kids’ destinies not to be determined by their ZIP code.

That’s been the rallying cry of education reformers, and a lot of that has translated into, we want kids from any socioeconomic background to be able to go to college and thrive there. And if you get to college and you don’t know who Winston Churchill is or you don’t know what Stonehenge is you’re going to be at a disadvantage. So it’s not just cultural bias. It’s also what is the knowledge that any student, any person in this society, needs to have a fighting chance of succeeding and contributing to society and to our democracy.

This may seem like a silly question, but a lot of cultural references that people may encounter may be non-academic in nature. I’m thinking of an example for myself where I have never watched “Game of Thrones” and I actually encounter references to it all the time. Should schools be teaching students cultural references that they’re likely to encounter that go far beyond science and social studies?

I’m with you on “Game of Thrones.” We must be the only two people left in the country that haven’t watched it. We could be teaching those things in school, but I bet you students are a lot more familiar with those cultural references than they are with Achilles heel or the War of 1812. I think we also have to think about what is likely to survive in the culture and be used as a touchstone 20 years from now that people will need to have stored in their long-term memory so that they can easily understand a text or or whatever is put in front of them. We just don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s certain things that have stood the test of time, and maybe we should go with those.

You say at one point that education is our “only hope” to reduce multigenerational poverty. The implication is that fixing the knowledge gap is our only hope to reduce multigenerational poverty. That seems like a really strong claim. And it also suggests that direct anti-poverty programs are not a way to reduce multigenerational poverty.

We’ve had a war on poverty going on since the 1960s and we haven’t really reduced multigenerational poverty. I’m not saying we should do away with anti-poverty programs but I don’t think they’ve worked to break that cycle for most people who are trapped in it.

You can no longer get a good-paying job with an eighth-grade education going to work in a factory. That’s just not really there anymore. I’m not saying everybody needs to go to college, but if we want to try to level the playing field to some extent and enable kids to move up in society through the socioeconomic levels, I don’t really don’t see any alternative to education.

Sure, kids need food. They need a stable place to live. Health care, all of those things. But that’s not necessarily going to enable them to get a really well-paying job or live a really fulfilling and rich life. I mean, they may, but a lot of them are deprived of that opportunity because they are deprived of a meaningful education.

I’ve seen this, for example, in the history of women’s rights. Look to what preceded the push for women’s rights, that 1848 Seneca convention and all of that — a tremendous explosion in women’s education in the earlier part of the 19th century. And what that did for women was it changed their self concept, changed their idea of what they were capable of doing. I think that that is a pretty universal experience. So I think that is ideally what education can do. It can change your sense of who you are, what you deserve from society, and what you’re capable of.

[Note: The official poverty rate fell steeply starting in 1959, but hasn’t budged much since 1970. But research that more fully accounts for welfare benefits suggests that such programs have helped cut the poverty rate from 26% in 1967 to 16% in 2012. “We’ve done a better job of cushioning the impact of poverty by expanding the social safety net,” Wexler said in a follow-up email. “There’s certainly lots of evidence of growing inequality in U.S. society and low rates of social mobility — that’s what I have in mind.”]

Can you talk about what you think the takeaway from your book is for teachers and also for policymakers?

For both, the initial thing is just to understand why what we’ve been doing hasn’t really been working and why. Secondly, it really has to be a multi-pronged effort if we want things to change. It probably has to start with the adoption by policymakers or central office officials of a content-focused elementary curriculum. But if it’s just imposed on teachers from the top down as so many education initiatives are — without teachers understanding why it’s a good idea — then it probably won’t really get into classroom practice in the way we want. Historically teachers have been able to just close the classroom door and do what makes sense to them, and they still do that.

We need to also help educators understand why this new approach makes sense and help them understand how to implement it well because it is a big change, especially at the elementary level for most teachers. So they need support, coaching, and time to adjust to it.

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The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it Hardcover – Aug. 6 2019

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• ISBN-10 0735213550
• ISBN-13 978-0735213555
• Publisher Avery
• Publication date Aug. 6 2019
• Language English
• Dimensions 16 x 2.79 x 23.62 cm
• Print length 336 pages
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Avery (Aug. 6 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735213550
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735213555
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 516 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16 x 2.79 x 23.62 cm
• #188 in Educational Curriculum & Instruction Textbooks
• #473 in Education Policies
• #830 in Parenting School-Age Children (Books)

About the author

Natalie wexler.

Natalie Wexler is a DC-based education journalist focusing on literacy and the so-called achievement gap. She is the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix It (Avery 2019), and the co-author of The Writing Revolution: Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades (Jossey-Bass 2017), a step-by-step guide to using the instructional method developed by Dr. Judith Hochman. She is also a contributor on education to Forbes.com and the author of three novels. Please visit her website at www.nataliewexler.com.

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Enjoy a free trial on us P.when("A", "a-expander", "ready").execute(function(A, expander) { A.on("a:accordion:buybox-accordion:select", function(data) { // Change active accordion pricing to APEX pricing A.$("#buyBoxAccordion").find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_show").addClass("adbl_bb_price_hide"); A.$(data.selectedRow.$row).find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_hide").addClass("adbl_bb_price_show"); //initialize accordion expander expander.initializeExpanders(); }); }); /* Display price in a table block so it does not overflow, ref: https://t.corp.amazon.com/D76383263 */ #adbl_bb_price { display: table; } /* APEX Pricing for Mobile & MobileApp */ .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 36px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 38px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 24px; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 15px !important; line-height: 26px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 10px; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } /* APEX Pricing for Desktop */ #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 21px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 28px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 21px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 16px; top:-10px !important; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 12px !important; line-height: 9px; } $0.00 $ 0 . 00

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The knowledge gap: the hidden cause of america's broken education system--and how to fix it audible audiobook – unabridged.

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.

• Listening Length 9 hours and 15 minutes
• Author Natalie Wexler
• Narrator Natalie Wexler
• Audible release date August 6, 2019
• Language English
• Publisher Penguin Audio
• ASIN B07TJ23BPS
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
• See all details

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