The Knowledge Gap Quotes

“In short, teaching writing is not only inseparable from teaching content, it can also be tantamount to teaching students how to think critically.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“Research has established that one aspect of reading does need to be taught and practiced as a set of skills, much like math: decoding, the part that involves matching sounds to letters. The problem is that the other aspect of reading—comprehension—is also being taught that way. While there’s plenty of evidence that some instruction in some comprehension strategies can be helpful for some children, there’s no reason to believe it can turn struggling readers into accomplished ones.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“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.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“It’s true that we all construct our own knowledge, in the sense that we don’t just store facts we’ve heard verbatim. We need to interpret and synthesize to achieve true understanding.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“Students who aren’t reading on grade level by third grade are four times less likely to graduate from high school. If the child is poor, the odds are even worse.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“When I die,” goes one internet meme, “I want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“the three shifts.” The first shift is that students need regular practice reading complex text; the second is that they need to be able to ground their claims in evidence from the text; and the third is that students must have “extensive opportunities to build knowledge” through “content-rich nonfiction.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“close reading was an important means of building knowledge.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“In fact, Bloom meant that knowledge and comprehension are prerequisites for higher-order thinking, and that teachers should never ask students to start analyzing or evaluating a topic until first ensuring they have a solid understanding of it. Cognitive science has since provided scientific support for Bloom’s intended approach; we can think critically only when we have factual information at our fingertips—or to be more precise, stored in our long-term memory. That enables us to devote the limited space available in working memory to analysis. Memorizing and understanding is a crucial step to developing so-called twenty-first-century skills like critical thinking. The more you know about a particular topic, the better able you are to think about it critically.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“In fact, Bloom meant that knowledge and comprehension are prerequisites for higher-order thinking, and that teachers should never ask students to start analyzing or evaluating a topic until first ensuring they have a solid understanding of it.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“readers actually learn better from more complex text, as long as they have sufficient background knowledge on the topic, perhaps because the challenge engages them.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“Reading tests, Willingham has written, are really “knowledge tests in disguise.” Test-takers don’t need deep understanding; a passing familiarity with pneumonia or Greek mythical heroes will do. The tests don’t directly assess content knowledge; they simply draw on it to try to assess comprehension.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“retrieving information from memory—unlike retrieving it from the internet—increases the chances that you’ll remember it more easily the next time you need it.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“it’s far more effective to impart information to students directly rather than having them attempt to figure it out for themselves, especially when they don’t already know much about a topic.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“The more knowledge a child starts with, the more likely she is to acquire yet more knowledge. She’ll read more and understand and retain information better, because knowledge, like Velcro, sticks best to other related knowledge.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“the concerted cultivation kids are better equipped to do well in school.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“Often, difficulties begin to emerge in fourth grade, when children are confronted with nonfiction and texts that use more sophisticated vocabulary.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“educators have overlooked the fact that part of “learning to read” is acquiring knowledge.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“In fact, the benefits students derive from the small-group format of guided reading are generally canceled out by the lack of learning in the rest of the classroom.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“many American students lack basic knowledge about the world.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“By restricting students to their own experiences”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“Hochman discovered that writing”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“At the next Core Task Project meeting”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“The same is true of explanatory language known among Common Core aficionados as “the three shifts.” The first shift is that students need regular practice reading complex text; the second is that they need to be able to ground their claims in evidence from the text; and the third is that students must have “extensive opportunities to build knowledge” through “content-rich nonfiction.”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“That graphic has led many educators to conclude that the “lower-order” tasks should be passed over as quickly as possible”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“The problem with PD is that it hasn’t worked. Teachers often see it as a waste of time”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“The debate over phonics again erupted into the national conversation”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“If teachers organize their read-alouds by topic instead of the skill-of-the-week”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it

“In another study”
― Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System--and How to Fix it