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 ...

January 22, 2026 - Fausto Lopez finished high school, got an associate degree and applied to attend a four-year college - all while inside juvenile detention. Amid a deepening literacy crisis, there’s ...

The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism. Makers of ...

Editor’s Note: Click on the words highlighted in this story to pull up a definition and short research summary. When is a reading test not a true reading test? Most of the time. For years, cognitive ...

Award-winning secondary teacher Anthony Merlino is well aware that students’ literacy progress can show up in seemingly innocuous ways.

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 ...

Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report is one of the better education journalists working today. She does her homework, understands research, and makes a visible effort to connect evidence with ...