Today with natalie to discuss her brandnew book the knowledge gap the hitting cause of the broken Education System and how to fix it. Welcome. Im delighted to be here with you. Tell me about why you wrote this book in your inspiration. I live in dc i was writing about educational Reform Efforts here of which there were many and also somewhat involved in the Education Reform Movement on the board of the Charter School and i became fascinated because i think partly education is so important it is our best hope to address in equity in society to break the cycle of multi generational poverty and what also was interesting to me but there was another story which is what happened when you get to high School Everything falls apart everything approves at the middle school and elementary level to go to the classroom but then in high school its a different picture and the scores were not improving. And i could not understand why although there has been a lot of attention. So what i stumbled upon the fact the real problems that have become so apparent in high school is the way we teach kids. So once i realize that and all the research i had done on a Panel Discussion that somebody had to try to get that issue into that conversation. Can you describe to people the content rich curriculum look like quick. First of all the focus is on content rather than reading comprehension with a universal approach to Elementary Education and the reading that kids are doing is not designed with those master skills were to make an inference in the theory is you could apply that and those who study learning and with those applicable skills. We should be doing the opposite. In that time on social studies and expand the knowledge of the world and there are many different ways they focus on topics rather than skills because kids can take and so much more information and the concept and that vocabulary and then they need to be exposed to that and to understand what they are reading. Tell highway teachers job looks different when they teach that content rich curriculum versus skills. It could look more challenging because with those teaching skills and then to model the skill that you choose not for its content and then to demonstrate to compare and contrast and then you just have to read the book to say this phrase is coming up a lot so that is the main idea this character is planning to do x and then just provide the kids that appear to be at their own individual level and then they practice the skill. Does require a lot of content knowledge for a lot of effort but in that classroom and then to focus on whatever topic they can cover and that they are designed with their own curriculum. They are juggling so many things. The attention should be focused on how best to deliver the content and curriculum not to come up from scratch. And then to be organized by topics and to spend a couple of weeks or more on a topic and there are theories to be organized around that topic that you read aloud depending on their reading ability having been in those classrooms to find the experience of the content focused much more engaging and satisfying. It gives kids a chance to explore the things they are interested in. This is when they discover its to birds or dinosaurs or whatever. They discover things they didnt even know they were interested in. And then to choose what they want to study and inculcated in teacher training then to pursue their own interest but especially for kids coming into School Without a lot of knowledge, they dont know what they are interested in i have seen with greek mythology they were not picking it up at home they knew nothing it isnt necessarily they encounter in their daily lives. But they love it because it stories and they are interested. It is so interesting with the argument to be exposed to content rich in the Public Schools and im curious how you would grapple with the question of who determines what should be taught there are a lot of challenges around understanding who decides and so i want to pick your brain a little bit on that. So that has come up a lot but i would say several things. We make those decisions with a High School Curriculum somehow we managed to decide what kids should learn and the problem is if we wait until high school to implement those decisions, many dont have the background knowledge to understand what we want them to learn. If we can make them for High School Kids and why not Elementary School kids for them to learn what they want to learn cracks with that set of knowledge that we dont have to make value judgments but what do we want kids to know or to understand the news and make those decisions quick so they make cultural references and Historical Information about American History and other countries and without that knowledge they will be at a severe disadvantage in high school and college and beyond. One of the challenges that parents have ideas what they want their children to be taught when it comes to young people of color representation to see themselves in history a lot of times the content that we see does not include marginalized roots as a piece so i wonder is there a role for parents and folks who are worried about those that see themselves in the curriculum quick. I think parents do but to be successful if they understand there is a certain body of knowledge in order to acquire or to understand the newspaper world around them that there is a mirror and a window. So the good news is with the curriculum with your own life and ethnicity and heritage. And this is true for all groups of students and the cultures that may not look like you and the good news what i am talking about is if we dont spend that precious time on those comprehension skills there is a lot of time left to provide the mere and the window. You are absolutely right. We have to be able to walk it at the same time and we can but i am convinced it takes a larger group of people to decide than what is previously the case. It was fascinating to work with the parent cabinet when i was chancellor of the dc Public Schools they had very clear ideas what they wanted their people to learn and i think far too often we discount the ability parents have two partner with us so as the district thinks about this they see parents as real partners. Yes there is unexploited potential to have more influence of one over what goes on encouraging them to move to that knowledge that many Parents Trust schools and teachers to know what to do to prepare kids academically so i didnt look too closely at what my children were learning because they were happy and thriving that when i look back now, they did have great Elementary School experiences, but i realized one thing they were not getting early on was history because of the widespread view that is developmentally inappropriate topic for Young Children which there is no evidence to that. Kids love history it can be presented very engaging as a story but they got plenty of exposure at home i did not even question they were not getting it so a lot of parents are in that position they dont know what is going in the classroom and if moore really understood what was going on in the vast majority of the classrooms and how kids learned they would be up in arms. Talk about reading and writing and to make a significant difference in both subjects the National Math scores are not there so if you could diagnose differently with different solutions. Im not an expert whats going on in math but i feel its quite different from literacy but i have been told that the math test doesnt always correspond with was being taught at the grade levels but another problem i have seen that literacy can interfere with those problems on the test they will do much better than if they have to read it themselves so i followed two classrooms through the school year through the knowledge building approach in those through low income and with the literacy lesson i thought i will look around to see what i can learn and im glad i did because as i wandered the rumor kids were independently trying to work on math problems, i found the literacy issues they are not just in reading but vocabulary issues were interfering with their ability to do these math problems one child did not understand the word combine eight and three he did not understand the word and another child was having real trouble with the number coming before 84 but he didnt understand the word before. So these literacy problems affect beyond literacy strictly speaking. How did we get here cracks. That is one reason i wrote the book because i wanted to figure out where this all came from that this way of teaching is not intuitive if you read a book and then dont talk about what its about or those secrets of events and i have had to piece this together but maybe to go back to the Progressive Education Movement but essentially the central tenet is that it is better for children to discover or construct their own knowledge without having being told or explained to them by a teacher and there is some truth to that and then to construct her own knowledge but there is a difference between that and to say their own facts of history and science especially without a lot of knowledge of the world and expecting them to discover themselves is tremendously inefficient. But the way that it feeds into the skill structured approach is that teachers feel they are providing children with the tools and the skills to acquire and construct their own knowledge. They are dumping it on them in one way that is not going to be absorbed so with this skill focused approach to take hold, there have been a number of more recent developments that intensified that beginning with the advent of highstakes testing that has become the yardstick of which we measure progress to look at them and measure those financial skills make an inference so teachers or administrators naturally say we need to double down to overlook the fact they are low because they dont have the background knowledge in the first place is not that they cant make the inference even toddlers can make the inference. That is in the problem so much as the vocabulary to understand that passage and that has been a big problem. You spend a lot of time talking about teachers but not colleges of education in fact you said you feel like they have to teach the tools but there is those that are making a decision what teachers are learning and that is the essence of your book so what role of teacher training quick. I do address that to some extent and it is hugely important i dont know if it will change that quickly that yes teacher training is at the root of a lot of these problems im not casting blame but it is partly the result of a divergence between schools of education and academia on the other. So then those concepts that are outdated and to be superseded by other things is partly a lack of communication and a different mindset of research and what that means and the scientific methods that a psychologist might use in the preference for trusting observations in the classroom. So they may be dismissive and there has been a lot of research about the background knowledge but other things that could really help teachers to teach more efficiently and students learn more efficiently but they are either unaware of those developments or wary of them because they think as a scientist being an ivory tower not really understanding whats going on in the classroom. And you need both the perspective of the practitione practitioner, but also this helpful evidence of how children learn. But that lack of communication ships that burden on the employer has to bring in professional development and teach people i say that as a former School District leader we have to teach what they are not being taught in schools in education. So how do we get the psychologists and educators and universities and Training Programs that already have 900 things to do. I will address that but its not impossible for teachers to learn on the job professional development is not very effective but its also what they have suffered from with Elementary Education to disconnected skills so how do you develop Critical Thinking . You are teaching greek mythology about the civil war that will be much more helpful it with teachers they often fit with the scope of education they lack the background knowledge of history and science if they have the undergraduate degree they really hadnt gotten those basic courses a good curriculum a good teacher can learn a lot with his or her students i have learned so much history but you are right. Ideally they would be getting trained before they go to the classroom and their content tolerated knowledge and pedagogical techniques. There are some mobile signs on the horizon that schools and teacher Training Programs in one of their objectives it should be so revolutionary but to bring teacher training in line with cognitive science. It is difficult when teachers are not content tent but then expect them to teach content well there is a lot of research that shows tshirts on teachers who have a subject area of expertise are usually more effective than those who dont because you have the content knowledge you dont see that manifest until high school because thats when you take content specific courses. But for us this led to departmentalization or having content courses in Elementary School and they told us we were crazy forgiving kids are not having one teacher responsible for everything that one who was math and science and another social studies and english or if we could separate them out. I dont thank you are crazy. It does make sense but it is the chicken and egg problem because if we have Elementary School curricula they dont expect them to teach much content then why bother to give them that knowledge . But we should be expecting that in the advantage of departmentalization is when you have one teacher who is responsible for english and social studies and the way to do that is to double down on those comprehensive skills they need a shift but they put the skills in the foreground. What will it take to a content rich knowledgebased way of teaching as the norm quick. It will take multi pronged effort not just from the top down or grassroots up up because Classroom Teachers are not in a position to adopt curriculum for the entire school or district because they can only do so muc much. But if it is imposed without teachers understanding why it will not get implemented into the classroom used to opening the door and doing whatever they want but it starts with the adoption of a content rich elementary curriculum focused on building knowledge. As teachers moved to understand and then to get professional development embedded in the content curriculum it is an adjustment from that way of teaching and and the habitual obstacle even if you really want to switch to a different way of teaching im sure you know it is a very complex activity. I am and not as they juggle and then teaching a lesson while one little girl has lice and in that situation is easy to resort they need to take time and give opportunity to collaborate and we havent talked about this but testing. It is very hard for teachers to get the message to focus on content if they feel their performance in school and student performance will be evaluated and i talked to the teachers here in dc to give the message waving test scores but teachers have not been able to hear that but skills is what enables them to do well on the test. I agree it is a multipronged approach there are so many Different Things that contribute to why this doesnt happen from the teacher buyin or professional development to which curriculum folks have two whatever else and i want to spend time talking about teacher buyin. Just to go through a content rich curriculum this is what will move us. You arent really challenging when we moved to a content rich curriculum we had to change everything how they were professionally developed to who was professionally developing teachers and that content knowledge at the same time we were helping them to teach skills to do both pushing back against the union who said teachers should decide what they want to do to a state Education System and so as you rightly say to understand that the cabinet and you do all of these random things but they are not random you said you needed to understand so we laid those out for you and you said now you know how we want you to teach but it wasnt consistent or equitable so we work with you to develop curriculum and literally i told the story. Yes. That makes sense so that communication is huge but without moving any other structures. I had to cut 30000 words. [laughter] there is a lot that i dont go into and i know it is more complicated than just adopting a content rich curriculum and there is no one thing that will fix education. Thinking we were all good but people want to read the book and how to fix it and to do this one thing. That i will say there are other things we need to do. We have to make sure they have enough to eat. But i will say if we dont address the curriculum issue we might break the cycle of multi generational poverty. You are right it is complicated to bring teachers along to clearly and effectively but the state of louisiana was studied as a model for getting teachers on board at the district level. I havent done a close study but talking to teachers and administrators and i hear it has to do with engaging teachers in the kids of louisiana its to rate the different curriculum that is out there and training them because what makes one better than another . And those teachers go back to their districts and their schools and its less topdown because there are so many initiatives especially in urban schools now we do this and now we do this they develop a resistance to anything new but if youre coming from a colleague rather than the administrator and that happens overnight. He said that home in dc the first thing people want to do is by content rich curriculum but we felt like teachers wanted to be involved in