Natalie Wexler

Natalie Wexler is an American education writer with an unusually broad professional background. She studied history and law and worked as a reporter, lawyer, legal historian, freelance writer, and essayist before concentrating on education. Her journalism has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.

Wexler writes about literacy instruction, curriculum, educational inequality, and the findings of cognitive science. She combines reporting from classrooms with research and historical explanation, asking how teaching methods shape what children know and how well they can read and write.

Her best-known book, The Knowledge Gap, argues that many American elementary schools devote too much time to practicing general reading-comprehension skills and too little to building knowledge through history, science, literature, and the arts. She also co-wrote The Writing Revolution with Judith C. Hochman, a practical guide to using explicit writing instruction across subjects. Beyond the Science of Reading extends her interest in connecting literacy teaching with the broader science of learning.

For a first encounter, choose The Knowledge Gap. It is the clearest introduction to Wexler’s central argument and balances an account of how prevailing practices arose with scenes from schools trying knowledge-rich alternatives. Readers interested in classroom methods can follow it with The Writing Revolution.