Key insights from
The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It
Audio available
10 minute read
Published Aug 6, 2019
What you'll learn
Skills, skills, skills! This is the modern day educational emphasis that teachers take for granted, but according to researcher and journalist Natalie Wexler, it is letting young kids down. The rest of the world is moving ahead while US literacy lags behind, and an increasing proportion of US kids fall short of proficiency standards across subjects—especially students from low-income families. The growing gap in achievement between the low-income students and higher-income students and overall decline in educated high school graduates prompts the question, “Are we missing something?” Wexler submits the problem and solution are straightforward, but whether or not educators embrace this alternative remains to be seen.
Key insights
- 1 The educational establishment emphasizes skills and rarely gets around to knowledge.
- 2 Quality education is the last best hope for disrupting the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
- 3 The Common Core drew out the tension between skills and knowledge, but it is also the United States’ best shot at bringing both together.
- 4 Low-income students and students with disabilities are exceeding teacher expectations when assigned challenging, content-rich texts to explore.
- 5 Scaling up content-rich curricula across the nation is not a pipe dream—it’s beginning to happen.
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