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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Fire Ants. What do you know about them? Turn and talk to the person sitting next to you." My face flushed as I turned to the middle-aged stranger sitting beside me in the workshop. “Um..they sting? Or ...

Amid a deepening literacy crisis, there’s been a focus on how to close the achievement gap, but Natalie Wexler sees the key problem undermining the American educational system a little differently.

A remarkable long-term study by University of Virginia researchers led by David Grissmer demonstrates unusually robust and beneficial effects on reading achievement among students in schools that ...

A literature review synthesizes and analyzes previous research in a field to inform an audience and establish background knowledge. Literature reviews are most often part of a larger work, like a ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Washington Post’s Knowledge Map aims to diminish that frustration by embedding context and background directly in a story. (We wrote about it briefly when it debuted earlier this month.) ...

Access these resources as a member - it's free! The History behind the Cabinet of George Washington and what he did as a leader. Over the course of time. George Washington was a successful leader when ...