Substack Q&A: Natalie Wexler of "Minding The Gap"

Should we teach more knowledge and less process? Why has knowledge become a bad word? Racket catches up with K-12 expert Natalie Wexler, author of "The Knowledge Gap"

A great debate consumed education professionals in the K-12 realm in the last decades: how best to address stubborn statistical inequities in outcomes involving students from low-income and/or minority backgrounds. Because Americans often reserve their strongest opinions for issues involving their children, the problem has fueled a range of furious controversies. Some advance equity-based solutions, others argue tackling basic structural inequality in society at large might be a prerequisite to solving the education conundrum, and others still argue it’s not the state’s job to “fix” the problem at all.

Natalie Wexler of “Minding the Gap” writes about K-12 education from a different angle. She’s best known for a book, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System — and How to Fix It that makes a compelling case that the children she describes as “the most vulnerable students” often struggle with traditional approaches that assume reading is “a set of skills that can be taught completely disconnected from content.” Kids from more affluent backgrounds gain more basic knowledge of the world at home, making reading easier since they’re absorbing fewer unfamiliar concepts. Focus on teaching knowledge instead of process, Wexler implies, and vulnerable students will learn more quickly.

“Minding the Gap” offers a way for readers to get provocative alternative perspectives on mainstream coverage of education. When Washington Post writer Laura Meckler published a popular book called Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity, Wexler wrote, “Shaker Heights Offers a Lesson in the Limits of Integration,” which argued the outcomes in the famed Cleveland suburb might be caused by an ineffective approach:

If Shaker and other school systems are serious about achieving equity, they need to first abolish a tracking system that begins in kindergarten, under the widely accepted practice of “leveled reading,” and adopt a curriculum that gives all children access to “enrichment.”

What is “tracking”? Wexler links to an article about that, too:

High school used to be an elite institution: in the 19th century, relatively few students went past eighth grade. But between 1870 and 1940, the number attending high school increased by a multiple of almost ninety… Faced with a massive influx of ill-prepared students, high schools introduced tracking. Students headed to college—generally those from wealthier families—were placed on the academic track, while others were relegated to vocational tracks… Often students were funneled into tracks based on their IQ scores, which were thought to measure inherent and unchangeable intellectual capacities…

In short, Wexler’s site provides food for thought for people already interested in education, but also offers detailed explanations of modern trends and how they came into being. It’s always a good sign if a site or magazine can be interesting to experts and beginners alike, and this one is useful for educators, parents, journalists, and people with no background at all.

Racket caught up with Wexler to ask about her approach, and about “Minding the Gap”:

Racket: What can you tell us about yourself?

Natalie Wexler: I’m 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, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades (Jossey-Bass 2019). Generally, I write about literacy, cognitive science, and fairness, and my articles have appeared in a number of publications, including the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. My Substack newsletter, which is free, is called Minding the Gap.

I’m also the host of a six-episode podcast called Reading Comprehension Revisited, which was the inaugural season of the Knowledge Matters Podcast.

I won’t go into everything else I’ve done over the years, except to say that I’ve also worked as a lawyer and a legal historian. And I live in Washington, D.C.

Racket: What do you see as some of the biggest issues in education right now? 

Wexler: To my mind, the major issue in education for many years has been the discrepancy in test scores and other outcomes between students at the lower and upper ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. There’s been a lot of attention recently to pandemic-related learning loss—as well there should be, since it seems likely to hold many students back for years, if not the rest of their lives. But the pandemic only exacerbated pre-existing inequities in our education system. So it’s not a new problem. It’s just gotten worse.

That means that the most popular prescriptions for addressing pandemic-related learning loss are unlikely to have much long-term impact. If you extend learning time—either by lengthening the school day or year, or through tutoring—it’s unlikely to work if you’re just doing more of the same thing that hasn’t worked in the past.

The basic problem in the U.S., and some other countries, is a deeply entrenched philosophical approach to education that is well-intentioned but conflicts with evidence from cognitive science about how learning actually works. There is beginning to be some recognition of that but not nearly enough. The fact is that our education system really only works for students who would probably thrive in any system. They’re thriving not because of the system but rather in spite of it.

Racket: The science of reading movement has taken American education by storm – is it really the panacea it claims to be?

Wexler: The term “science of reading” has often been reduced in the public conversation to the science related to phonics. It’s true that the standard approach to teaching children how to read or “decode” individual words has conflicted with scientific evidence for many years now—and that’s a huge problem. You need to be able to decode words in order to become a proficient reader, and many if not most children need systematic instruction in phonics in order to do that.

It’s not that science-of-reading advocates reduce reading to phonics; they acknowledge that other factors are involved. But the laser-like focus on problems with phonics instruction has created the impression that if we just “fix phonics,” all will be well.

For some kids—primarily those from highly educated, relatively affluent families—that may be true. But if schools continue to use the standard approach to teaching reading comprehension—which also conflicts with scientific evidence—many students still won’t be able to reach their full potential.

That standard approach has students practice comprehension skills like “finding the main idea,” using books that are easy enough for them to read on their own on a random variety of topics. This takes up many hours every week in elementary and sometimes middle school, swallowing up time that could be used for social studies and science. The result is that the only students who are able to acquire much academic knowledge and the vocabulary that goes with it are those who are lucky enough to get exposed to it at home, often because their families have more resources.

The problem may not become apparent until students reach higher grade levels—even if kids get good decoding instruction. One recent study of 41 states plus D.C. found that adopting early literacy policies aimed at improving decoding instruction boosts reading scores at the elementary level, but the effects fade out after fifth grade.

Why? Experts agree that as grade levels go up, what becomes more important than just the ability to decode words is the ability to comprehend complex text. And the current approach to teaching reading comprehension isn’t equipping students to do that.

Anyone who cares about phonics should also be concerned about changing our approach to reading comprehension so that it focuses on building students’ academic knowledge and vocabulary, as well as their familiarity with the complex sentence structure of written language. If we don’t change comprehension instruction, many students are likely to reach higher grade levels able to decode complex text but unable to understand it. When that has happened in the past, some have said, “You see? Phonics instruction doesn’t work.” And the pendulum has swung away from phonics. That could happen again.

Phonics does work. But it’s not enough to ensure comprehension.

Racket: In your book, The Knowledge Gap, you write that many schools dismiss content in favor of abstract skills–what’s the problem with this? Can’t skills be applied to any content? 

Wexler: Some skills can be taught directly, practiced to mastery, and applied generally. That’s true of, say, riding a bike—it doesn’t matter what kind of bike you’re riding—and it’s also true of decoding words. But it’s not true of the kinds of skills that schools spend many hours trying to teach, like “making inferences” or “critical thinking.” Whether you can apply those skills depends largely on whether you have enough background knowledge relating to the text or the topic.

There’s ample evidence that knowing a lot about the topic you’re reading about—for example, baseball—is enormously helpful to comprehension. Similarly, there’s lots of evidence that the more you know about a topic, the better able you are to think critically about it.

It’s been harder to get evidence that if you build students’ knowledge by teaching them about a series of topics, through a content-rich curriculum, their general reading comprehension will improve. But that’s largely because it can take three years or more for students to acquire the critical mass of general academic knowledge and vocabulary that enables them to read and understand texts on topics they aren’t already familiar with. Studies that follow kids for that long are expensive and difficult to carry out. Still, we’re beginning to get some of them, and they generally bear out the theory behind knowledge-building curricula, with students from low-income families benefitting the most.

It would certainly be easier if we could just teach isolated skills like “finding the main idea” and not have to figure out what content to teach and how. But unfortunately, it just doesn’t work. One indication is that students don’t benefit any more from getting hundreds of hours of comprehension instruction and practice than they do from just a few hours. If these were true skills, more instruction and practice would make a difference. (Imagine if you took 100 guitar lessons and your playing still wasn’t any better than it was after just three or four. Wouldn’t you start to wonder what was going on?)

That doesn’t mean teachers have to choose between teaching comprehension skills and building knowledge. Rather, it’s a question of what to put in the foreground. What works is to put specific content in the foreground and bring in whatever skills are appropriate to help students understand and absorb the content.

Racket: Where should educators go if they want to learn about the cognitive science of learning? Are there some books that might be helpful primers? 

Wexler: Yes, indeed—and this is a good opportunity to make the point that the science of reading, including the science related to reading comprehension, is really a subset of the science of learning in general, or cognitive science. Our ability to understand what we read draws on everything we’ve been able to learn; at the same time, reading is a way of learning. The same thing is true of writing. So the principles of cognitive science, which have a lot to do with ensuring that students are able to retain important information in long-term memory, also apply to literacy.

Many books have been written that explain cognitive science to laypeople, including a number specifically directed at teachers. Perhaps the grandaddy of them all is Make It Stick, by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel, which appeared in 2014. Others that are particularly relevant for teachers (and this is not an exhaustive list) include Powerful Teaching by Patrice M. Bain and Pooja K. Agarwal; Uncommon Sense Teaching, by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, and Terrence J. Sejnowski; How Learning Happens, by Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick;  How We Learn, by Stanislas Dehaene; Why Don’t Students Like School, by Daniel T. Willingham; Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action, by Oliver Lovell; and the most concise of all, at 75 small pages, Cognitive Load Theory, by Greg Ashman.

There are also online resources like The Learning Scientists website and the Science of Learning Substack newsletter.

Racket: You’re a Democrat who’s been mistaken for a Republican mainly because some words around education seem to code left or right for reasons that might seem mysterious to an outsider. Why is “knowledge” controversial?

Wexler: It’s not just advocating for building knowledge that has been seen as a politically conservative position. Advocating for systematic phonics instruction has also been viewed that way by many educators.

I’d say the deep roots of that perception lie in the philosophy that has dominated schools of education for the past hundred years or so. At its heart is the idea that students learn best when they discover things for themselves and direct their own learning rather than having someone actually teach them anything. The mantra is that it’s better to be a “guide on the side” than a “sage on the stage.” That has become bound up with the political idea that a “sage on the stage” is inherently patriarchal or elitist—and therefore politically conservative.

As applied to phonics, that belief has undergirded the erroneous idea that most children will essentially teach themselves to read if they’re surrounded with enough good books. Few would make that argument today—it was popular 30 or 40 years ago—but there’s still a feeling among many educators that too much direct instruction is unnecessary and even harmful.

Something similar is at play when it comes to the idea of knowledge. I was told by the dean of one school of education that the very idea of transmitting knowledge from one generation to another is inherently elitist. On top of that there is the perception on the left that some knowledge-building curricula are overly Eurocentric or take what they see as a conservative position on certain topics. (The same curricula have been attacked from the right for being too “woke.”)

I think the opposition to knowledge-building on the left is motivated by a sincere belief that it would cause harm to students from historically disadvantaged minorities—and that the very idea of a “knowledge gap” is disrespectful to the “funds of knowledge” those students have acquired from their own communities.

If you look at what cognitive science tells us, though, it’s clear those students stand to benefit the most from a knowledge-building approach. And to say that some students have knowledge gaps doesn’t imply a lack of respect for the knowledge they’ve acquired outside school.

We all have knowledge gaps. I’m reminded of my own knowledge gaps whenever I try to read something about sports or popular culture. But the knowledge gap I’m focusing on is the gap between the knowledge the curriculum assumes students will have at higher grade levels—the knowledge we hold them accountable for—and the knowledge we give them access to at lower grade levels. To me, holding someone accountable for knowledge you’ve denied them access to is the height of unfairness.

Racket: What is “tracking” and why do you think it failed in places like Shaker Heights?

Wexler: Tracking is usually thought of as the different sequences of courses that students are funneled into in middle and/or high school, supposedly on the basis of ability. The practice originated in the early 20^th century, when the high school population suddenly exploded. Before that, high school had basically been limited to a small minority who were academically inclined. But now there was an influx of students who weren’t prepared to handle a rigorous curriculum. So schools established, for example, vocational tracks for those who were thought not to be college material, often based on IQ tests.

Nowadays, that kind of rigid tracking is generally seen as unacceptable, because students from historically disadvantaged minorities and low-income families were disproportionately relegated to lower tracks. But high schools now have honors and AP classes that tend to be populated exclusively by more affluent students, most of them white. That’s ended up being another form of tracking, with similar results—except that now no one is learning to be an auto mechanic or a hairstylist.

Shaker Heights is a generally affluent and politically progressive Cleveland suburb. The schools have been integrated for decades, but—just as in many other places—its tracking system, which began in fifth grade, resulted in many students of color being relegated to non-honors classes. Several years ago, the district abolished that system, along with its “enrichment” classes at lower grade levels, which were almost exclusively white. Now all students were supposed to be taught at the honors level.

By most accounts, the experiment hasn’t been a success. (I’m drawing on an excellent book by Laura Meckler called Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity). Instead of having reading assigned as homework in high school honors classes, for example, literature was read aloud in class. Teachers were assigning less writing because some students struggled with it.

But as long as we continue teaching elementary school the way we do, some students are inevitably going to arrive at high school much less prepared than others. This has far more to do with socioeconomic status, and specifically level of parental education, than with race. But it’s perceived as primarily a racial issue in places like Shaker Heights because virtually all the low-income students are Black or brown.

We actually have a system of tracking that begins in kindergarten, although no one calls it that. Instead, it’s called “leveled reading.” Kids are sorted into reading groups and limited to books they can decode and understand on their own, to practice their reading skills.

There are at least two problems with that. First, the tests used to sort kids are highly unreliable—mainly because they don’t take account of the fact that prior knowledge of the topic is closely linked to comprehension—so kids may be trying to read books they don’t have the background knowledge to understand. (They may also be unable to decode them, if the words don’t follow the phonics patterns that have already been taught.) The other problem, though, is that if they do understand the books, the vocabulary is likely to be pretty simple. So they’re not acquiring the kind of academic vocabulary they’ll be assumed to have in later years.

The way to combat tracking is to give all children, beginning in the early elementary years, access to complex, engaging texts that are organized around specific topics—for example, having the teacher read aloud a series of books about sea mammals for a few weeks and lead class discussions of the content. Once kids have acquired knowledge of sea mammals that way, they’re likely to be able to read and write about that topic at a higher level, gaining yet more knowledge. By the time kids get to middle or high school, they should have acquired enough academic knowledge and vocabulary to handle, say, a high school textbook on biology.

Kids also need explicit instruction in writing, beginning at the sentence level, with writing activities embedded in the content they’re learning. (This description applies to a method of instruction called The Writing Revolution.) Writing is really hard—much harder than reading—and we basically expect kids to just pick it up. Most don’t. Explicit writing instruction of this kind can also help compensate for knowledge gaps at higher grade levels. Writing helps information stick in long-term memory, even if you don’t have a pre-existing framework to fit it into.

It simply won’t work to end tracking by declaring all students honor students. That doesn’t mean everyone has to take the same high school classes. Even if we start building knowledge for all children in the early grades, there will inevitably be differences in academic aptitude or interest. Under that kind of system, it might well make sense to provide different kinds of high school classes depending on those differences. But right now I don’t think we have any idea of the true academic potential of most students.

Racket: Democrats have traditionally dominated in polls with voters on education issues, but in recent years that advantage has shrunk considerably. What’s changed, do you think, and do you see opportunities where both parties might agree on certain more successful approaches?

Wexler: I think Democrats have, with the best of intentions, made some missteps on education in the last couple of decades, and that has led to some backlash. The No Child Left Behind legislation was actually initiated under a Republican, George W. Bush, but it came to be identified with Democrats under the Obama administration. So did the Common Core standards, which were originally a bipartisan effort. The resulting regime of testing, along with instruction that didn’t seem to make much sense, alienated many teachers and parents. (The architects of the Common Core literacy standards actually wanted schools to adopt knowledge-building curricula, but for the most part, that message didn’t come through.)

In addition, I think some voters identify Democrats with what they see as leftist indoctrination in schools. I think the media have given too much coverage to education culture wars, and I don’t think legislatures should be in the business of telling teachers what they can and cannot discuss in class. But the fact is that in many places, teachers skew to the left of the surrounding population, and that can lead to problems. I’ve read accounts of even fairly progressive Democrats being taken aback by what is being taught in their children’s classrooms.

Theoretically, education should be a bipartisan issue—as it was for a while, with the education reform movement encompassing both Democrats and Republicans. But the perceived failure of that movement has led to disagreements about what to do next. The left has focused on “decolonizing the curriculum” and culturally responsive teaching, while the right has focused on school choice and vouchers. No one is talking much about the fact that the fundamentals of our education system conflict with science, aside from the “science of reading” outcry over phonics.

Still, I’m wary of the federal government trying to effect much change in education, regardless of which party is in office. It doesn’t have any direct power over education, and when indirect efforts have been tried they’ve tended to backfire. I suppose the Secretary of Education could at least start talking about cognitive science, as government officials in some countries have done. But the risk is that those in the opposing party would reject the concept on political grounds. Also, the message is pretty complicated—far more complicated than “teach phonics”—and a lot could get lost in translation.

It seems to me our best bet is for individual states to identify literacy curricula that both teach phonics systematically and build knowledge effectively (not always an easy endeavor) and require or at least recommend that districts adopt them. That’s already beginning to happen in some places—mostly “red” states, but also some “blue” ones.

Not all districts in those states will implement the curricula well, and none of the curricula are perfect. (The most reliable source for identifying knowledge-building curricula is the website of the Knowledge Matters Campaign, although it doesn’t weigh their relative advantages and disadvantages.) But from what I’ve seen, even if things are far from perfect, they’re often so much better than they were under the previous regime that teachers and administrators are over the moon.

And some places are actually knocking it out of the park, often by combining an approach like The Writing Revolution with a content-rich curriculum. The problem is that it’s hard to identify where this is happening (I visited one such district recently—Monroe, Louisiana). It’s virtually impossible to figure out which districts or schools are using which curricula, because states generally don’t collect that information. At the very least, state governments should start assembling and publicizing that data instead of just disseminating test scores that don’t provide much information about actual school quality. I would hope that would be a nonpartisan issue!