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It describes how students in high-poverty schools struggle with chronology, basic geography and civics concepts, and historical understanding. The article links these problems to long-term outcomes such as lower higher-education participation and weaker career readiness. It also introduces research showing that prior knowledge strongly affects comprehension, beyond reading ability.",{"@graph":69,"@context":114},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":35,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/healthcare/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/launching-literacy-building-knowledge-what-an-elementary-school-curriculum-should-do/591712/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/launching-literacy-building-knowledge-what-an-elementary-school-curriculum-should-do/591712.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Dipper","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-31","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":19},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does prior knowledge affect students’ ability to understand texts?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The article reports an experiment in which students’ baseball knowledge made a large difference in their comprehension. Prior knowledge improved understanding even beyond what reading level alone would predict.","Answer","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":116,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":118,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":120,"site_id":62},591712,1792932789,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":123},{"doc_id":120,"user_id":124,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":125,"doc_module":4,"category_id":34,"category_name":35,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":126,"file_id":127,"file_url":128,"file_type":129,"file_size":130,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":24,"language":131,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":132,"faqs":133,"seo_title":134,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":135,"read_time":136,"preview_page_count":4},1374404997633,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd","LAUNCHING LITERACY  \nBuilding Knowledge  \nWhat an Elementary School Curriculum Should Do  \nILLUSTRAT IONS BY SALLY VITSKY  \nBy Natalie Wexler  \nD  \nespite billions of dollars and massive efforts on the part of thousands of highly dedicated and intelligent people over the past 25 years, the size of the test-score gap between the wealthiest and the poorest students hasn’t  \nchanged.1 Our mediocre standing on international literacy rankingsis largely a reflection of how low our lowest scores are.2 Teachers in high-poverty schools in Washington, D.C., have told me they’ve had students at all levels of ability, including the highest, but some of their stories were deeply disturbing.  \nTheir high school students often lack a sense of chronology, they said. Students may confuse the Civil War and the civil rights movement. They may think Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. were contemporaries. In a world history class studying the segregation faced by black soldiers returning to the United States after WorldWar I, some students were under the impression that slavery still existed in 1918. In a course on the United States after the Civil  \nNatalie Wexler is an education journalist and coauthor with Judith C. Hochman of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking through Writing in All Subjects and Grades. This article is an excerptfrom her book The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It (Avery). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Copyright 2019 by Wexler.  \nWar, the teacher couldn’t assume that students knew what happened before that war, even though they had already taken a class that covered it.“You have to start with: there was aWar of Independence,” she said,“and this is who we won our independence from.”3  \nOthers told me their students don’t understand the difference between a country and a continent, or between a city and a state. One kid in an SAT prep class—one of the better students, according to his teacher, who cited the fact that “he could place the United States on a world map”—was surprised by the term South America when he saw it on a map, apparently for the first time: How could it be called America if it wasn’t in America?4  \nAnother high schoolteacher said she’s even had a few students who don’t know the name of the country they live in.“They think Washington, D.C., is their country,” she said.5  \nUrban school systems have been faced with the impossible task of turning ninth-graders who arrive with gaps like these into“college-and career-ready” graduates in four years—and threatened with consequences under federal law if graduation rates dip below 67 percent. For a while, the threats appeared to be working: in 2016, the national graduation rate reached an alltime high of more than 84 percent.6 But within months, it became clear that some urban school systems had turned to subterfuges.7 These included having students pass courses by taking far less rigorous online versions and changing attendance records. In Washington, D.C.—a city that many reformers have  \n18 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2020  \nChildren need to stick with a topic for days or weeks, encountering the same vocabulary and concepts repeatedly.  \npointed to as a model, and where the graduation rate rose 20 points in six years—an investigation revealed that a full third of the 2017 graduates hadn’t met requirements.8  \nThese problems don’t end at high school. Studies suggest that students with low test scores are less likely to pursue higher education, obtain and keep jobs, provide for their families, exercise their civic rights and responsibilities, and lead fulfilling lives.9 Education is supposed to enable everyone to do those things. It represents our best hope for breaking the cycle of multigenerational poverty. Really, it’s our only hope.  \nAnd it’s not working. Socioeconomic inequality in the United States is ontherise.10 Many students proudly enroll in college—the surest route","cbCaikC3BbQpNYeG","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikC3BbQpNYeG","pdf",329157,"English","# What an Elementary School Curriculum Should Do\n## The Persistence of Literacy Gaps\n## Knowledge Makes a Difference","[{\"question\":\"How does prior knowledge affect students’ ability to understand texts?\",\"answer\":\"The article reports an experiment in which students’ baseball knowledge made a large difference in their comprehension. Prior knowledge improved understanding even beyond what reading level alone would predict.\"}]","Launching Literacy - Building Knowledge - What an Elementary School Curriculum Should Do | PDF",1792073045,13]