Main idea and summary are essential elements of reading comprehension. We report results from Grades 4 and 5 student performance on two years of state‐mandated standardized reading testing which indicate that students perform statistically significantly lower on main idea and summary questions on the tests than any other question category. In this study, teacher competency was measured in a main idea task and teacher surveys were used to understand what instructional practices and materials they use to teach reading comprehension. Descriptive analyses indicate that teachers have a moderate competency for writing main ideas and many use instructional practices that are not supported by empirical evidence or reviewed by the What Works Clearinghouse. Thus, teacher knowledge and instructional practices may be malleable factors that contribute to student outcomes.

中文翻译：

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四年级和五年级阅读理解问题的“ GIST”

主要思想和总结是阅读理解的基本要素。我们报告了四年和五年级学生在国家规定的标准化阅读测试中的成绩，这些结果表明，学生在测试中对主要观点和总结性问题的表现明显低于其他任何问题类别。在这项研究中，在一项主要的思想任务中对教师的能力进行了测量，并使用教师调查来了解他们使用哪些教学实践和教材来教阅读理解。描述性分析表明，教师具有较强的写作主要思想能力，许多教师使用的教学实践没有经验证据的支持，也没有得到What Works Clearinghouse的审查。从而，