The Knowledge Matters Podcast

American education has a number of serious problems – and our failure to start building kids' knowledge early is a fundamental one. By now you know that reading comprehension is complicated and as you’ll hear, so is the explanation for what has gone wrong with the way American schools have approached it.
In the sixth and final episode of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", Natalie will explain how we ended up in a place it’s not clear anyone wanted to go, in the grip of a reading crisis that goes far beyond the important issue of how we teach students to decode. Not only do two thirds of students test below the proficient level in reading, many Americans lack vital knowledge about the world they live in. For example, scores on national tests in American History hit a new low in 2022: only 14% of eighth graders scored proficient or above, and 40% scored below the "basic" level. Scores in civics are only slightly better. And students don’t necessarily learn more about these subjects after eighth grade: one survey, for example, found that 11% of US adults haven't heard of or aren't sure if they've heard of the Holocaust. For millennials, the figure is 22%.
Closing knowledge gaps is important for several reasons. It's important for the untold numbers of students whose potential remains to be unlocked – students who might otherwise go through school and life, feeling like they’re failures, when in fact it's the system that has failed them. It's important for society, which will otherwise be deprived of those students’ potential. And it's important for democracy, which depends on a citizenry that can understand the world well enough to make informed decisions.
Because, as Spring Cook, the educator you met in Episode 1 put it:
It is a matter of equity, it's a matter of democracy, and when we're able to give students those skills and that knowledge at an early age, then think what a better society will have.
For more information about the information in this episode, visit the episode webpage on the Knowledge Matters Podcast website.
This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. You can learn more about our work at www.knowledgematterscampaign.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search the #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with Natalie, you can contact her through her website, www.nataliewexler.com.

Production by Sarah Gilmore and Aidan Shea. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

In the second episode of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", host Natalie Wexler dives into persistent misconceptions about reading comprehension that have pervaded the education system for decades.
Unpacking the fact that teachers have often believed they were teaching comprehension when, in fact, they weren’t, Natalie explores the overlooked importance of knowledge in reading comprehension and its profound and under-recognized impact on student literacy. This is particularly significant for students from historically disadvantaged groups.
Featuring prominent reading researcher, Dr. Hugh Catts – a professor of communication science and disorders at Florida State University – this episode explains that reading comprehension is not a set of discrete skills that can be applied to any text. Instead, Natalie and Hugh explain that comprehension is deeply intertwined with the reader's prior knowledge about the topic and the world in general, along with the vocabulary that grows alongside that knowledge. This means that teaching reading comprehension as a set of abstract skills, often at the expense of subjects like history and science, can lead to students struggling to understand texts at higher grade levels. And while standardized reading comprehension tests purport to measure comprehension skills, they often end up assessing whether students have the knowledge and vocabulary to understand the test passages.
It’s crucial to teach kids to decode, and the attention being focused on that issue is hugely important. But unless we also start building knowledge and vocabulary in the early grades, many students will hit a wall at higher grade levels, when texts become more complex.
For more information about the information in this episode, including links to studies and pictures of the infographics mentioned, visit the episode webpage on the Knowledge Matters Podcast website.
This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. You can learn more about our work at www.knowledgematterscampaign.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with Natalie, you can contact her through her website, www.nataliewexler.com.

Production by Sarah Gilmore and Aidan Shea. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

In the last episode of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", you heard from three teachers – Abby, Deloris, and Kyair – who talked about their experiences using some of the knowledge-building literacy curricula that have recently been developed. In Episode 4, you’ll hear from them again, and you’ll meet Cassidy Burns, a 3rd grade teacher from Louisiana. They describe how these newer curricula incorporate writing instruction, and how that differs from the standard approach.
In the standard approach to literacy, writing is often kept separate from reading, just as both of those things are kept separate from building students' knowledge of the world. When it's time for writing, students generally drop whatever they've been learning about, and try to respond to a disconnected writing prompt about, for example, a personal experience, or a topic in a separate writing curriculum with its own content. But the evidence indicates that students learn best when reading and writing are connected to each other. And both should be connected to a curriculum that is rich in content.
Writing instruction can be a game changer at all grade levels. It can help identify the misunderstandings or gaps in background knowledge that are preventing students from doing grade level work and also make it easier for students to learn and retain new information. As Abby, Deloris, Kyair, and Cassidy will tell you, it is not only possible to teach writing this way, it’s preferable – for students and for teachers. In this episode you’ll hear how knowledge-building has changed their approach to teaching writing, and the difference it made in their classrooms.
For more information about the information in this episode, visit the episode webpage on the Knowledge Matters Podcast website.
This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. You can learn more about our work at www.knowledgematterscampaign.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with Natalie, you can contact her through her website, www.nataliewexler.com.

Production by Sarah Gilmore and Aidan Shea. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

Explorers boldly venture into unfamiliar worlds, where confidence, curiosity, knowledge, and persistence are rewarded. When students approach texts like explorers, they bring these same qualities to the task—a mindset cognitive scientists call the “standard of coherence.” Such reading is purposeful, engaging, and expands the reader’s horizons. Reading anywhere, anytime is not just doable. It’s joyful.

In this episode, hosts David and Meredith Liben discuss the key ingredients that power persistent reading and support students to apply the “standard of coherence” mindset when they read, including how the standard of coherence and related practices helped students accelerate their literacy development at the Libens’ NYC school.

The notion of “coherence” sets a high bar for a reader’s expectations of their abilities and the text. They expect that it will make sense, and if it doesn’t, they will know what to do. With this mindset, students immediately apply practiced strategies to comprehend a text: closely read and reread, account for and explain what they know and don’t know, and use evidence from the text to back up those assertions and ideas. Expert Margaret McKeown talks about the key role comprehension monitoring plays in the process.

The Libens then talk with three teachers who have experienced new curriculum and helped students develop the standard of coherence in their classrooms:

• Fifth-grade teacher Sean Morrisey, who discusses strategies to preview texts and build fluency (spoiler alert: spend time with books, not screens)
• Patty Collins, a teaching veteran, compares her work as a watercolor painter to how she creatively engages students within the EL Education reading curriculum (which she calls “my medium”)
• Third-grade teacher Staci McDougall, who discusses how she and her students have grown, by changing classroom practice and building stamina and comprehension

David and Meredith also talk about the importance of building stamina to engage with texts. By giving students time to read closely and persist through comprehension strategies, like providing textual evidence, they can become strong and steady readers who can keep focused on complexities over time.

For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. The research, studies and artifacts mentioned are posted on the Knowledge Matters Campaign curriculum review tool.

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with David and Meredith, you can contact them through their website, readingdoneright.org.

Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

When’s the last time you finished a chapter of a book and thought, “Hmmm, what was the main idea?” Competent readers don’t ask themselves this question. They’re too busy focusing on the text itself, not the component strategies that help us understand them.

But that’s not how traditional curriculum and instructional practices work. Instead, they teach reading through a strategy-first approach that focuses on skills like making inferences and predictions, not the text itself.

In this episode, David and Meredith Liben explore what Meredith calls “the tail wagging the dog” in reading comprehension, including examples from personal experience, insights from research, and stories of how they learned to do things differently. The Libens also highlight the costs of a strategy-first approach: missed opportunities for students to engage deeply with the ideas and implications of a text, and activity prompts that ask kids to check their brains at the door as they complete inauthentic exercises.

Two guests join the conversation:

• Literacy expert Margaret McKeown discusses how strategy-focused instruction is still all too common in classrooms. It’s tangible–and is doomed to fail.
• Fifth-grade teacher Sean Morrissey shares his firsthand experience piloting two ELA curriculums - one that centers on novels and read-alouds, and one that uses book excerpts on a common theme and tests on target strategies. The differences are stark.

Finally, the conversation turns to a habit of mind the Libens will discuss later in the season: the standards of coherence. This is a habit of mind where a reader expects they will understand a text, and if it doesn’t make sense, they go back and do the mental work needed to make meaning from what they are reading.

For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. The research, studies and artifacts mentioned are posted on the Knowledge Matters Campaign curriculum review tool.

Key quote: “I want kids to know what a summary is, what an inference is. But I wouldn't say, ‘Hey, kids, today we're gonna learn to do a summary.’ What I would do is: in a discussion, if a student gave a summary of a piece of text, I would say, ‘Very nice, you gave us a good summary of that, and move on.” (McKeown)

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with David and Meredith, you can contact them through their website, readingdoneright.org.

Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.