The Academic Achievement Gap Is a Knowledge Gap
14th June 2026
Children of married parents with high education levels are more likely to be healthy and succeed in school and life than their peers. Children from these families are also more likely to live above the poverty line and benefit from extracurricular activities such as music lessons, sports, and summer camp. These activities offer students prized background knowledge.
Students from families with lower education levels must rely more on schools to provide information. Poor reading and math scores nationwide do not give confidence that schools in low-income areas are bridging the gap. Many schools have reduced time spent on history, science, geography, literature, and civics in favor of generic reading strategies, so-called social-emotional learning, and “gender” studies. Schools often cut the very subjects that help students.
Differences in background knowledge have enormous implications for teaching reading. Two students can read the same paragraph and perform differently on the test, not because one is more intelligent, but because he knows the topic better.
For decades, researcher and former professor E.D. Hirsch argued that literacy is connected to content and vocabulary. Hirsch has argued that “broad general knowledge” is essential for reading comprehension because students need prior knowledge to understand what they read.
Likewise, professor of cognitive psychology Daniel T. Willingham, who researches reading comprehension, has also found that background information is important for students to understand text.