Summary of Natalie Wexler's The Knowledge Gap

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In 2016, Gaby Arredondo was trying to teach her class of twenty first-graders about captions. She had taught them that a caption is a label that describes a picture, but many of them had chosen the title of the passage instead. #2 The American approach to elementary education is to teach reading skills completely disconnected from content. It doesn’t matter what students are reading, as long as they can identify captions in a simple text. #3 The focus on reading in the early grades has led to a huge amount of time being spent on it. This has led to other subjects being neglected, especially social studies. #4 There are many arguments in favor of testing, but most teachers don’t like the emphasis on testing and the consequent narrowing of the curriculum. They would rather spend more time on social studies and science, but they are required to test students.