The 10 Most Significant Educational Studies of 2020

This week's article summary is The 10 Most Significant Educational Studies of 2020

I only included 7 of the studies—you can click the link above for the other three that don’t apply greatly to Trinity or early childhood/elementary educational practices.

To me, what’s particularly gratifying is the studies affirm the ongoing programmatic and pedagogical work we do at Trinity. While there is art to great teaching, Trinity utilizes teaching practices whose evidence is demonstration of student learning and understanding.

Our school mantra is to cherish childhood as we simultaneously prepare our students for the future by shaping a strong academic and character foundation (the four Cs of Cognition, Character, Continued Curiosity, and Cultivating Confidence).

You’ll see proof below of what we’ve been focusing on:

• Importance of stimulating multimodalities (including handwriting) to reinforce content in long-term memory and ease of retrieval
• The very limited connection of standardized testing results with student success in the classroom
• The benefits (for both teacher and students) of proactive clarity about what is going to be learned and then assessed
• How student engagement aids in learning
• Why Lucy Calkins’ three cueing is not sound pedagogy
• Why deep, rich content is so important (the subject of some earlier article summaries).

Obviously, we’ve all been consumed by the black hole of Covid-19 for the past 10 months, yet this week’s article is a reminder of the bigger aspects of education and, more importantly, that Trinity, as always, remains in sync with current educational research!

Joe

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TO TEACH VOCABULARY, LET KIDS BE THESPIANS: When students are learning a new language, ask them to act out vocabulary words. It’s fun to unleash a child’s inner thespian, of course, but a 2020 study concluded that it also nearly doubles their ability to remember the words months later. It’s a simple reminder that if you want students to remember something, encourage them to learn it in a variety of ways—by drawing it, acting it out, or pairing it with relevant images, for example.

NEUROSCIENTISTS DEFEND THE VALUE OF TEACHING HANDWRITING—AGAIN: For most kids, typing just doesn’t cut it. In 2012, brain scans of preliterate children revealed crucial reading circuitry flickering to life when kids hand-printed letters and then tried to read them. Also, a team of researchers studied seventh graders while they handwrote, drew, and typed words, and concluded that handwriting and drawing produced telltale neural tracings indicative of deeper learning. Whenever self-generated movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated. It also appears that the movements related to keyboard typing do not activate these networks the same way that drawing and handwriting do.

All kids still need to develop digital skills, and there’s evidence that technology helps children with dyslexia to overcome obstacles like note-taking or illegible handwriting.

THE ACT TEST JUST GOT A NEGATIVE SCORE (FACE PALM): A 2020 study found that ACT test scores, which are often a key factor in college admissions, showed a weak—or even negative—relationship when it came to predicting how successful students would be in college. Often students with very high ACT scores—but indifferent high school grades—flame out in college, overmatched by the rigors of a university’s academic schedule. In a similar study about SAT scores, researchers found that high school grades were stronger predictors of four-year-college graduation than SAT scores. The reason? Four-year high school grades, the researchers asserted, are a better indicator of crucial skills like perseverance, time management, and the ability to avoid distractions.

A RUBRIC REDUCES RACIAL GRADING BIAS: A simple step might help undercut the pernicious effect of grading bias: Articulate your standards clearly before you begin grading, and refer to the standards regularly during the assessment process. When grading criteria are vague, implicit stereotypes can insidiously “fill in the blanks.” But when teachers have an explicit set of criteria to evaluate the writing—asking whether the student “provides a well-elaborated recount of an event,” for example—the difference in grades is nearly eliminated.

STUDENTS WHO GENERATE GOOD QUESTIONS ARE BETTER LEARNERS: Some of the most popular study strategies—highlighting passages, rereading notes, and underlining key sentences—are also among the least effective. A 2020 study highlighted a powerful alternative: Get students to generate questions about their learning, and gradually press them to ask more probing questions. In the study, students who studied a topic and then generated their own questions scored higher on a test than students who used passive strategies like studying their notes and rereading classroom material. Creating questions, the researchers found, not only encouraged students to think more deeply about the topic but also strengthened their ability to remember what they were studying.

DID A 2020 STUDY JUST END THE ‘READING WARS’?: Lucy Calkins Unit of Study was dealt a severe blow when a panel of reading experts concluded that it “would be unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren.” The study found that the program failed to explicitly and systematically teach young readers how to decode and encode written words, and was thus “in direct opposition to an enormous body of settled research.” The study sounded the death knell for practices that de-emphasize phonics in favor of having children use multiple sources of information—like story events or illustrations—to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words, an approach often associated with “balanced literacy.” Calkins seemed to concede the point, writing that “aspects of balanced literacy need some ‘rebalancing.’”

RESEARCHERS CAST DOUBT ON READING TASKS LIKE ‘FINDING THE MAIN IDEA’: “Content is comprehension,” declared a 2020 Fordham Institute study, sounding a note of defiance as it staked out a position in the ongoing debate over the teaching of intrinsic reading skills versus the teaching of content knowledge. Exposing kids to rich content in civics, history, and social studies appeared to teach reading more effectively than our current methods of teaching reading. According to Natalie Wexler, the author of the well-received 2019 book The Knowledge Gap, content knowledge and reading are intertwined. “Students with more background knowledge have a better chance of understanding whatever text they encounter. They’re able to retrieve more information about the topic from long-term memory, leaving more space in working memory for comprehension,” she recently told Edutopia.

Thank You For A Great First Week of 2021

Even though it’s been a tragic and tumultuous week for our country, I want to thank all of you for such a phenomenal beginning of the second half of the school year! Every email I received from parents was effusive in praise of how impressively you all engaged their children--not an easy task in a virtual environment! Parents clearly recognize the care, thoughtfulness, creativity, and energy you all put into this week. Thank you!

My emotions are still so raw from what we witnessed in DC this week, I haven’t been able to process and organize my thoughts, so forgive the incoherent blathering of the rest of this paragraph. As I watched the hate-filled, brazen vandalism of the Capitol, I recalled how many times I had stood with groups of students in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall describing the basic tenets of democracy and the complementary workings of three branches of our federal government. While our country isn’t perfect, I enjoyed teaching my students about our country’s core values and virtues, including our freedoms and our individual and collective responsibilities of being a contributing citizen in a democratic republic. To see such wanton and lawless destruction of our country’s democratic pillars--checks and balances, trust of the voting process, peaceful transition of power, putting aside personal wants for the good of the whole--was one of the lowest points in my life as an American. Much like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, this week’s events will go down in infamy in the history of our country. As an eternal optimist, though, I am hopeful that good can come from bad and those who believe in and live by fairness and empathy will guide and lead us. Here’s to a better 2021, even though it’s off to a rocky start.

Anyway, the very short article summary is a number of quotes from elementary school children who were asked to describe the year 2020 in only six words. As always, kids are more insightful (and funny and poignant) than we give them credit for: 

• Daytime pajamas make great school attire
• Never take seeing friends for granted
• The world is a fragile place
• Great parents aren’t always great teachers
• Life can be easy…and hard
• If I learned one thing: masks
• I love and hate my family
• Be catlike: nap, eat, avoid humans
• Real friends actually stick with you
• Lifesavers: doctors, cousins, teachers, elections, Minecraft

 Enjoy the weekend! Stay happy and healthy!

 Joe

National Reading and Math Scores Remain Stagnant

This week’s article summary is National Reading and Math Scores Haven't Budged in a Decade.

It’s probably not surprising that both reading and math standardized test results haven’t improved very much over the years, even when discounting Covid-19’s impact on student learning.

From my vantage point, these stagnant scores result from how America teaches reading and math.

As an article summary earlier this year pointed out, students who lack wide content knowledge typically struggle with reading comprehension: the more you know about the subject, the easier it is to understand readings about it.

Another article captures the dilemma of stagnant reading scores: “There are two essential components of reading comprehension: decoding ability and language comprehension. If a student can't decode, it doesn't matter how much background knowledge and vocabulary he understands—he won't be able to understand what's on the page. But the opposite is also true: If a student can decode but doesn't have a deep enough understanding of oral language, he won't be able to understand the words he can say out loud. Are students struggling on these tests to decode the words, or are students decoding words well, but lacking the background knowledge and vocabulary to know what they mean? Or is it some combination of both? Tests measure comprehension, not its components.”

Over the past few years, most schools have recommitted to emphasizing phonics and decoding, so my guess is the moribund test scores are more a result of not enough exposure to rich content.

To me, math test scores similarly relate to how we teach. Schools in the US continue to focus on one-step math problems and superficial coverage of concepts. On the international PISA exam, American students struggle mightily compared to students from other countries when it comes to multi-step math problems. This is partly due to our kids not having deep conceptual understanding of core math concepts, e.g., number operations, number flexibility, and algebraic reasoning.

What’s so gratifying to me is Trinity’s teaching of reading and math includes rich content exposure and ensures deeper conceptual understanding whether it’s subitizing in math or learning progressions in both subjects. And our standardized test results over the past few years tell the tale: our ERB scores both in reading and especially in math are well above the independent school norms.

Much like the slow food movement, I am a believer in the slow learning movement: for kids to truly understand, give them time to think, practice, go deeper, and demonstrate their learning in multiple ways.

Joe

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American students are struggling with reading. And the country's education system hasn't found a way to make it better.

In fact, fourth and eighth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress essentially haven't budged in 10 years. That's causing some alarm, considering the number of reforms aimed at American schools over the past decade: stronger academic standards, more tests, stricter teacher evaluations and laws that discourage schools from promoting third-graders if they can't read proficiently, to name a few.

"Reading has just been more or less plateauing, stagnating," said Peggy Carr, a leader of the assessments division for the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP to a representative sample of students across the country every two years.

Results of the 2019 NAEP, also known as the Nation's Report Card, showed elementary and middle school students scored worse in reading than they did two years ago. Specifically, 35% of fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2019, slightly down from 37% in 2017 and barely up from 33% of such students considered proficient a decade ago, in 2009. About 34% of eighth-graders were proficient in reading this year, a drop from 36% in 2017 and only a tiny bit better than 32% in 2009. 

To be clear, the national exams set a high bar for proficiency – higher than most state achievement tests. But they're the only consistent measure of how students nationwide are doing in core subjects over time.

"Since the first reading assessment in 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowest-performing students in either fourth or eighth grade," Carr said. "Our students struggling the most with reading are where they were nearly 30 years ago." Most schools also don't spend enough time having children practice reading fluency and developing their vocabulary, said a literacy professor at Kent State University. Fluency helps kids understand words immediately and not use up so much mental capacity laboring on each one. "Fluency requires different instructional methods than phonics," he said. "Practice is key." 

Are national math scores any better? In the short term, not really. But over 27 years, they've improved more than reading scores. About 41% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders scored proficient in math in 2019. That's not significantly different from 2017. Carr said the math scores are also about the same as a decade ago. But since 1990, students at both grade levels have improved in math: Fourth graders this year scored 27 points higher on the 300-point exam compared with their peers in 1990. Eighth-grade students posted an average score that was 19 points higher than in 1990.

What else has happened to math and reading scores in the past decade? The gap between the most- and least-competent students got bigger.  "Compared to a decade ago, we see that lower-achieving students made score declines in all of the assessments, while higher-performing students made score gains," Carr said. This divergence in performance is one reason why average student achievement hasn't changed in a decade, Carr explained.

The Importance of Influence in Relationships

This week’s article summary is about the various ways we influence others.

At first, I bristled at the article stating that ‘all relationships are transactional.’ 

But just like the author who at first questioned his own research, I reflected on my relationships with others and to what extent they involve transactions. All my personal and/or professional relationships include various degrees of give and take, negotiation and persuasion, trust and honesty, respect and responsibility, and/or leaps of faith. While the word ‘transaction’ has a negative connotation, the article’s author explains that the purpose of our interactions with others is to ultimately further or achieve something. This morning before I came to school, my wife asked me if I would be so kind as to get her a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. I said yes, went to Starbucks, and then brought it home for her. A nice gesture for a sleepy spouse, but a transaction nevertheless. 

Clearly working at Trinity (or in any school) involves establishing, furthering, and sustaining a variety of relationships---with students, colleagues, parents. Sometimes we influence others (through our support and encouragement, expertise, assistance, problem-solving, etc.) and other times we lean and rely on others. I’ve always worked in fairly big schools where it’s important to trust that others are doing their job, ensuring the effective and efficient operation of the school, be it recess coverage, drop-off/pick-up duty, balancing the budget, or scope/sequence of our curriculum.

Regardless of size, the most crucial aspect of relationship building at any school is how we treat and support one another. Teachers are caregivers and we both give and need care.

Whether or not you bristle at the word ‘transactional’ as I initially did, we need to remind ourselves and each other how important relationships are to our happiness and to school success.

Joe

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I’ve just wrapped up three years of thinking, researching, and writing about the ways we build relationships to continue to engage in good work. Throughout the process, I’ve learned a lot about the power of relationships, and about my own ability (and sometimes inability) to form them and use them in ways that truly benefit all. Here are four of the big ideas I’ve gathered in this work.

All relationships are transactional: This was initially a tough pill for me to swallow because I do not like, particularly in education, to think that every relationship we form is for a purpose. But transactions don’t mean lack of caring, interest or responsibility. Instead, it simply means that we recognize that interactions are about give and take, and that our work with each other, regardless of the roles we play, is in service to something beyond ourselves.

Influence is something to be strengthened: This also seemed negative as the idea coalesced. When we think of exerting influence on somebody, we often see it as nefarious. What I’ve learned is that influence is something we all must look to build if we hope to assist others in making the decisions that are best for those we serve. Regardless of who said it first, “It takes a village” is certainly a true statement. And no matter who we are in that village, if the knowledge and skills we have will prove beneficial in making changes in ways that will be best for learners and our community-at-large, then we have a responsibility to use that knowledge and those skills. Influencing others simply means helping them see what they might not currently be able to visualize, and helping them get to where they might not currently be able to go.

Influence can be chunked into different buckets: The ways we use influence can be broken down into four areas, depending on how much effort is needed to start or sustain a relationship interaction. For instance, a Pull force requires a lot of work to start and sustain the interaction, while a Push really only requires work on the sustaining end. A Shove is very hands-off, while a Nudge requires a lot of pre-work and little to nothing in order to sustain. Each of these Forces of Influence, as we call them, have different characteristics, different optimal times of use, and different strategies to employ. The key is that no one influence move works in all situations; we become better at growing relationships by recognizing who needs what, when, and why. Then, it is all about the how of working with others to make change happen.

No person is an island: While relationship interactions can happen one-on-one, there is very little that we do that doesn’t involve a wider circle of people we know, value, and trust. In the world of relationships and influence, incorporating the skillsets of more than one person is precisely what is needed in order to make lasting change.

This work has made me rethink my strategies for interacting with others, and the steps I take when trying to lead to change, whether it be on my own part, or in partnership with others. Overturning some thinking around relationships and relationship building has helped me welcome the power of influence and the benefit it can provide in reaching positive outcomes for all. 

Deep Appreciation for All You Do!

This week’s article summary, A Letter of Appreciation for Educators in The Pandemic, written by a college dean of education, captures the gratitude the entire country—if not the entire world—needs to bestow on teachers for their efforts over the past eight months.

 

I especially liked the words from the article’s penultimate paragraph that elevate our profession: Our country’s scientists are taking care of the science. Our medical professionals are taking care of our health. Our first responders are taking care of our safety. Similarly, our teachers are teaching our children. 

 

I’ve always been proud of being a teacher, yet today our profession--to which the vast majority of us have been called--is finally beginning to get the recognition it deserves.

 

At Trinity, all of us have made tremendous sacrifices during the first months of school, have diligently followed our PRP guidelines, and have masterfully put into practice our school mantra of Reimagination, Flexibility, Patience, and Grace. We have helped and supported our students in countless ways. We have witnessed the importance of in-person school for our students’ academic and social-emotional health and growth. And as we’re attending to our students at school, we’ve supported those who have needed to learn from home.

 

As we head into our Thanksgiving Break, I am so thankful for all your efforts, fortitude, energy, imagination, teamwork, positivity, and hope! As we take a collective breath over Thanksgiving, let’s appreciate what we’ve accomplished thus far this year!

 

Over the past eight months whenever things have looked particularly bleak or my physical or emotional energy was sapped, I imagined it was 2, 5, 10 years in the future and how proudly the future me will look back on what I did. For most of us, this will be the greatest moment of our teaching careers!

 

It can be very solitary and lonely during these unsettling times, and I feel deeply sorry for those who don’t have family, friends, and colleagues they can lean on for comfort, support, and even a good vent now and then.

 

To paraphrase Robert Frost, We have miles to go before we sleep, yet I am buoyed by being on this journey with all of you! 

 

Enjoy a restful, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving!

 

Joe

 

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While most of us are well into this unprecedented academic year, I want to say thank you to you—our nation’s teachers, who are giving 110 percent every day! Not only is your work and dedication vital to our children, schools, and communities, but it is also central to the progress of our society, especially during these particularly challenging times. You have always been at the forefront of shaping the next generation.

 

Thank you for spending countless hours collaborating with your colleagues. We see the 12-hour days, evenings, and weekends. We know you are probably worried about making mistakes, which are inevitable right now. We understand the challenge for you to learn and relearn new curricula, programs, and assessment approaches. All this while you are still expected to be fully present, including for your students who are learning remotely.

 

We see the high stakes involved with teaching at this moment, even when you have lives to live. Some of you have school-aged children of your own, some of you are caregivers for your own parents or other family members. You are doing spectacular work under extraordinary circumstances, and we recognize your commitment.

 

In many ways, this is nothing new. As teachers, you have always stepped up. When students needed safety, you provided it. When students needed mentorship, you provided it. When students needed academic engagement, you provided it. Now, during a pandemic, you have once again stepped up, albeit in different ways. By providing a space of stability, security, and safety, you are helping us collectively heal, learn, and persist. 

 

For all of these reasons, you—our nation’s teachers—need our gratitude. You are providing structure. You are providing consistency. You are providing an opportunity for our children to engage with their teachers and peers. You are providing opportunities to learn. You are reinforcing many of the basic skills that are necessary to be successful in school. Rather than asking what learning is lost during these times, we should be asking a different set of questions: How are teachers being creative? What policies, practices, and support systems have leaders put in place to make sure that you and your students flourish? What can others learn from you?

 

Our country’s scientists are taking care of the science. Our medical professionals are taking care of our health. Our first responders are taking care of our safety. Similarly, our teachers are teaching our children. It is time for us to support you—time to trust your professionalism and commitment and time to recognize the work behind your personal and professional efforts to excel for our students every single day in less than desirable circumstances.

 

While the teaching and learning experience will be different for the foreseeable future, the service that you are providing to our children, families, and communities during these challenging times is, indeed, recognized and appreciated. For those of you who are engaging and affirming your students, and supporting families, you are providing the hope that we all need right now.

 

 

 

Is Turn and Talk Effective in Classrooms?

This week's article's summary is Why Teachers Need to More Than Have Kids 'Turn and Talk'.

When I was in graduate school, one of my education professors asked his students to tape-record their classes and then re-listen to the class and provide a numerical rating every 7 seconds on the type of talk that was occurring in the class. How often was the teacher talking, how often were kids talking, and were they talking to the teacher or to other students?

My classmates and I were surprised that the vast majority of our classes were dominated by teacher-to-whole-class talk. Back then (and to a certain extent now) the Holy Grail of a great classroom was student-to-student talk. In other words, teachers should minimize their lecture time and allow for much more student-to-student interaction.

As you’ll see from the article below, there are some benefits to student-to-student talk, yet educational research shows that more often than not student-to-student talk doesn’t lead to better student learning.

What I especially like about education today compared to when I started in the 1980s is how the focus today is on the evidence of student learning, when years ago the focus was more on the components of exemplary teaching. I know this sounds weird—as the purpose of education should always be on what the student learns--yet my graduate studies focused more on improving teaching methods under the assumption that better teaching would lead to better student learning. Many teachers in the 80s thought they taught wonderfully. Back then I heard a lot of bragging about how stimulating teacher presentations had been and it was the kids’ fault that their test results were so poor.  

Today teachers truly empower kids and not just through student-to-student talk. We help students be more aware of not just what they’re learning but literally how they are learning, including the different pedagogies we employ to help them learn, remember, and then transfer and apply. Having kids be more cognizant of thinking about their thinking (metacognition) and having teachers guide them to various types of thinking with appropriate cues and scaffolding aids in remembering, recalling, and applying.

While art remains an important part of being a great teacher, the science of learning is certainly more prominent in schools today as our focus is on learning, not only teaching.

Lecture isn’t all that effective because it doesn’t necessarily actively engage students. But as the article below attests, student-to-student interaction isn’t always that effective either. 

Joe

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Teachers have been led to believe it’s good practice to have students work in groups or pairs, to boost learning and critical thinking. But too often, students get little or no benefit. Walk into almost any elementary classroom and you’ll see the teacher introduce a question and then immediately direct kids to “turn and talk” with a partner. I’ve seen this happen as often as every five or ten minutes. And I’ve seen kids have some lively discussions. But here’s what else I’ve seen:

• Kids having a lively discussion about a topic that has nothing to do with what they’re supposed to be talking about
• Kids having a discussion about the intended topic but saying things that don’t make a lot of sense
• One kid holding forth while a partner just listens—or stares into space
• Both kids staring into space, waiting for the teacher to say that time is up

Teachers may suspect that “turn and talk” isn’t always working the way it’s supposed to, but it’s been drummed into them that it’s an essential part of their pedagogical repertoire and should be used often. Relying on theories formulated many decades ago, schools of education train prospective teachers to believe that standing before a class and explaining things doesn’t work. What does work, they’re told, is having students interact with peers. 

To be sure, there’s truth to the idea that interaction has educational benefits. Learning doesn’t happen unless students are engaged, and group and pair work can be very engaging for students. But it’s possible to have engagement without learning. 

Research studies show that students can learn more from interacting with peers than from working independently, but just telling them to “turn and talk” isn’t enough. Teachers need to give kids guidelines that require them to debate and negotiate—for example, “Make sure you understand your partner’s perspective.”

That could work—but only if students start out with some understanding of what they’re discussing. Often, they’re directed to “turn and talk” about a topic the teacher hasn’t explained, on the theory that it’s better for them to figure out the facts for themselves. If learners don’t know much about a topic, they may not yet have a “perspective.” They may not have much to say at all—or they may come to erroneous conclusions.  Peer interaction may be great for getting students to share opinions or for reinforcing learning through discussion, but when it comes to factual conveyance, that’s what a subject expert is for.

In many ways group work is one of the most enduring myths in education. 

That’s not to say students should never be asked to work in pairs or groups. 

The alternative to group and pair work isn’t necessarily having a teacher just lecture to passive students. A teacher can impart information and guide thinking in engaging ways. In fact, the recent meta-analysis of studies on group and pair work found that having students interact with an adult one-on-one was more effective than having students interact with each other. But given that most classrooms have one teacher and 20 or more students, that’s not a realistic approach.

Still, teachers can read aloud or explain a concept to the entire class, and pause periodically to ask questions designed to check comprehension, focus attention on what’s important, and prompt analysis. A whole-class discussion can’t involve every student, but the teacher can expand the possibilities—and keep students on their toes—by calling on kids who haven’t necessarily raised their hands. Further questioning can encourage students to respond to others’ ideas and get a true conversation going. Once students seem to have a basic grasp of the subject matter and possible interpretations, a turn-and-talk activity might be appropriate.

One other potentially powerful and underused interactive technique that reaches all students is writing. That may not look like it involves interaction, but writers are inevitably trying to communicate with a reader. Writing requires much of the same cognitive work that underlies what scientists call the protégé effect--the boost to comprehension and retention of information that occurs when one person explains something to another. The caveat is that writing is far more difficult than speaking or even reading. Inexperienced writers need to be guided through carefully crafted activities that free up enough cognitive capacity to allow them to grapple with the material they’re writing about.

That’s challenging but far from impossible. Instead of repeatedly having students turn and talk—and running the risk that the talk will lead nowhere or not even happen—teachers could sometimes ask them to take a few minutes to reflect and write.

Literacy, Reading Comprehension, and Social Studies

This week’s article summary is School Reading Classes Still in a Slump Without more Social Studies.

An article summary from a month ago focused on the importance of background content/prior knowledge as a significant benefit to reading comprehension, and the one a few weeks ago focused on how superficial and incomplete most of today’s history textbooks are.

This article focuses on how American schools devote 40% more class time to learning to read compared to other countries. This high percentage is unquestionably influenced by high-stakes math/literacy testing mandated by our federal and state governments.  

The article’s author, an avid student of history, makes the case for how students by studying more history in school will increase their content knowledge, which in turn will raise their reading comprehension scores.

I agree with him up to a point. While content knowledge is good (and helps us answer questions on Jeopardy), a perplexing question is what constitutes accurate, truthful history. 

As I read the article, I couldn’t help but think the author loves history yet also thinks of it from a one-dimensional, one-perspective manner. Too often we learn only one diluted version of history. 

I agree with him that history can be exciting and thought-provoking, but it needs to push and challenge students by going beyond the superficial. We need to guide students to actively ask questions like ‘Whose experiences and perspectives are lacking’ and ‘In what way might this text skew the full story or omit disturbing events for the sake of narrative/thematic flow?’

I grew up in Cold Spring Harbor, a small town on Long Island Sound. In colonial times, it was a whaling village. When I was a kid, my town was a popular tourist stop with lots of quaint antique stores and even a small but popular museum on the history of whaling. From my kid’s perspective, my town’s history was bucolic.

Imagine my surprise when as an adult I learned that my idyllic hometown in the early 20th century was the infamous epicenter of American eugenics studies and research. (For those who don’t know, eugenics was the racist belief that Nordic whites were genetically superior to other people.) While textbooks commonly attached eugenics to Nazi Germany, America’s part is never covered.

As a history major in college, I read a lot of textbooks but by the time I was a junior and senior and taking discussion-based seminar classes, I mostly read primary sources, especially novels, to get a fuller view and feel of the time period. Nevertheless, what I read was mostly a white, male, Eurocentric perspective. Well-written books with provocative ideas but hardly the only perspective. 

So while I agree that content knowledge is important, we also need to teach kids to think for themselves, and to not assume what they read is the complete story. We all benefit from healthy skepticism of what we read, hear, and see--today more than ever. Superficial textbooks can help kids grow their content knowledge, but whose content knowledge? 

Joe

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From an early age, I have been a social studies nerd. Elementary school lessons on Civil War battles, besieged presidents, and westward expansion thrilled me.

So I am sad to learn that, according to a recent study, U.S. elementary schools are spending only 28 minutes a day on my favorite subject, while English language arts gets two hours and math almost an hour and a half.

The authors of the report say the puny history lessons are bad for reading achievement. “On average, students who receive an additional thirty minutes of social studies instruction per day . . . in grades 1-5 outperform in reading students with less social studies time. Social studies is the only subject with a clear, positive, and statistically significant effect on reading improvement.”

E.D. Hirsch and others have been pointing out for decades that children need more background information to become good readers. Yet the conventional wisdom still rules. Kids just need more reading instruction, we are told. That approach has left 2/3s of 4th and 8th graders not reading proficiently.

“Social studies has long been neglected in American primary school,” the authors say. “Elementary teachers are often taught that students should ‘first learn to read, so they can read to learn,’ even though youngsters can learn a lot about the world before they can decode.”

Other developed countries devote much less time to literacy classes than we do. American schools spend about 40% of class time on reading. In Japan, the number is only 24%. In Germany, it is 20%, in Finland 24% and in Canada 27%.

Part of the blame is the belief among many people that reading, beyond decoding, really is a skill independent of knowledge. School districts brag about their big blocks of time for reading instruction without bothering to see whether they work. Federal policy may have contributed to this trend by mandating annual state testing in reading and math.

Virginia’s annual state history tests were much admired around the country, but the scores were disappointing, perhaps because too little time was devoted to teaching social studies. The state solved the problem by killing state history tests. The English language arts exams remain.

This study notes a contrary trend in Louisiana. It is putting out reading assessments that align with the state’s English language arts and social studies curriculums. Natalie Wexler, author of “The Knowledge Gap,” said that literacy curriculums that incorporate social studies content may be the way to go.

“I’ve seen second-graders who are using that kind of curriculum eager to find out who won the War of 1812,” Wexler said. “They were also learning lots of other history and geography.

Could rebel teachers sneak more intriguing lessons on history and politics into the English curriculum? My grandsons often leave their school backpacks lying around. I will search them in hopes of finding unauthorized lessons on the Alamo and Teapot Dome.