Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Natalie Wexler is an education writer focusing on literacy. Updated, July 31: An earlier version of this article said that only ...

If American education understood, not superficially but to its core, the importance of knowledge and its foundational role in human cognition, teaching would look and sound very different. The ...

“If you are just able to decode the words, but you don’t have the context to understand them, you’re not getting to that effective, efficient, purposeful reading for meaning,” explains Dr. Molly Ness, ...

The latest in our series on the achievement gap. Could the problem be the nation’s focus on teaching skills rather than actual knowledge? Sarah Webb, fifth and eighth grade English Langue Learner ...

Adeyemi Stembridge, Ph.D., provides technical assistance for school improvement with a specific focus on equity. He works with districts around the country to identify root causes of achievement gaps ...

The purpose of going to school is to learn, but students may find certain topics difficult to understand if they don't have the necessary background knowledge. This is one of the conclusions of a ...

It seems like an obvious statement: It’s easier for readers to understand a text they already know something about. But this commonsense idea, backed by research, has big implications for reading ...

In classrooms across the country, teachers are rethinking how students build reading comprehension — not just how they decode words, but how they make meaning from text. That shift is part of a larger ...