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 ...

One of the arguments of cultural-literacy folks make for a curriculum that identifies knowledge everybody must learn and books everybody must read is that those core materials are necessary for ...

Our testing system is based on the idea that reading comprehension can be measured independently of what kids know, but science indicates otherwise. The American education system rests in large part ...

A new paper from Jamil Maroun and Christopher Tienken sets out to determine whether a state’s big standardized test measures student learning, teacher effectiveness, or something else. The answer, it ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...