There are two kinds of Lexile measures: the Lexile reader measure and the Lexile text measure. Students receive a Lexile reader measure as a score from a reading test - it describes his or her reading ability. Books and other texts receive a Lexile text measure from a software tool called the Lexile Analyzer - it describes the book's reading demand or difficulty.
When used together, these measures can help match a reader with reading material that is at an appropriate difficulty, or help give an idea of how well a reader will comprehend a text. The Lexile reader measure can also be used to monitor a reader's growth in reading ability over time. Lexile helps readers grow, and helps parents and teachers know.
When a Lexile text measure matches or is in the range of a Lexile reader measure, this is called a targeted reading experience. The reader will encounter some level of difficulty with the text, but not enough to get frustrated. This is the best way to grow as a reader - reading text that's not too hard but not too easy.
Click here to read more about what a Lexile measure is.
El Sistema Lexile para Leer is a separate reading framework from the English-language Lexile Framework for Reading. The differences between the two frameworks represent the differences between the two languages. A separate research corpus of Spanish texts is necessary to determine word frequency values, and a unique Lexile equation is necessary to quantify the relationship between sentence length and syntactic complexity. Click here to read more about El Sistema Lexile Para Leer.
Therefore, the Spanish Lexile measure for a text may be a different number from an English Lexile measure of that same text in English. Book measures bear this out. For instance, Curious George by H.A. Rey measures 400L in English, and the Spanish translation measures 270L. These two measures are not relative to each other; they each represent the separate reading demands of these two texts in their separate languages.
You can easily find "just right" books either for school or for pleasure reading. You can also easily know when a reader might need a little help, or a little more challenge.
When you receive your Lexile measure from a test, try not to focus on the exact number. Instead, consider a reading range around the number. A young person's Lexile range, or reading "sweet spot," is from 100L below to 50L above his or her reported measure. Use this range in our Find a Book search. And don't be afraid to look at books above and below someone's Lexile range. Just know that a reader might find these books particularly challenging or simple.
If a student tackles reading material above his or her Lexile range, consider what additional instruction or lower-level reading resources might help. Ask him or her to keep track of unknown words, and look them up together. Or take turns reading aloud to each other to chop up the reading experience into smaller portions. Likewise, you can reward students with easy reading just as adults like to grab a couple of pulp novels to read in the beach chair.
Much more information can be found in our sections for teachers, librarians, and parents.
MetaMetrics does not publish tests that report Lexile measures. Neither is there an online test on our Web site. Instead, we partner with state departments of education and test publishers to create assessments or link existing assessments to report Lexile measures. Currently, students can receive Lexile measures from many different tests and reading programs. See "How to get a Lexile measure" for more information.
There is no direct correspondence of a specific Lexile measure to a specific grade level. Within any classroom or grade, there will be a range of readers and a range of reading materials. For example, in a fifth-grade classroom there will be some readers who are ahead of the typical reader (about 250L above) and some readers who are behind the typical reader (about 250L below). To say that some books are "just right" for fifth graders assumes that all fifth graders are reading at about the same level. The Lexile Framework for Reading is intended to match readers with texts at whatever level each individual reader is reading.
With that said, we have a more detailed explanation and a chart available that shows Lexile ranges from actual test scores across the nation in each grade. Please keep in mind, the "Reader Measures" column of this chart is not to be taken as recommended ranges. This is simply where young readers are reading. And know that students scored above and below these ranges as well -- the ranges in the table are the middle 50% of students in each grade.
A person's Lexile range is a suggested range of texts that a reader should be reading. The Lexile range for a reader is from 50L above his or her Lexile measure to 100L below. If a student attempts material above their Lexile range, the text may challenge the student and his or her ability to construct meaning from the reading experience may decrease. Likewise, material below a reader’s Lexile range will provide him or her with little comprehension challenge.
Click here to read more about how material above or below the reader’s Lexile range can be used for specific instructional purposes.
If you can't find a book on Find a Book, then we haven't measured it yet. We do not choose the books that we measure. We measure books at a publisher's request. Although we work largely with publishers that publish books for the school market, many of the books in your library or media center do not yet have Lexile measures. Fortunately, we are constantly measuring books.
If you're interested in knowing the Lexile measure of a book we haven't measured, please contact the marketing or editorial divisions of the book's publisher and encourage them to send their books to us. The publisher will need the title, author, and ISBN for each book. If you'd like for us to contact the publisher on your behalf, simply fill out this form (http://lexile.com/requestlexile) and we will let the publisher know that there is a demand for their book(s) to be measured. Information for publishers to contact us is here: http://lexile.com/publishers.
You may also get an estimated measure for an unmeasured book by using our Lexile Analyzer on a portion of the book, according to our sampling guidelines. Please know, though, that an estimated Lexile measure will likely differ (perhaps even substantially) from the actual measure of the entire book.
A primary use of Lexile measures is for forecasting how well readers will comprehend texts. A reader with a measure of 600L who is given a text measured at 600L is expected to have a 75% comprehension rate. This is the “default” setting within the Lexile Framework. This value was selected to ensure that when a text's measure matches a reader's measure, the reading experience is not so hard that the reader experiences frustration and loses the meaning-thread of the text, but is not so easy that the reader does not encounter any new vocabulary or sentence structures that help grow him or her as a reader.
Several factors impact a student’s test score. For example, a different set of test questions could have been selected, or the test could have been administered on a morning when there was a band practicing in the next room or on a day when the child missed breakfast. For more information, read the MetaMetrics whitepapers Why Do Scores Change and Managing Multiple Measure.
Using the Managing Multiple Measures utility, you can take two different tests that report a Lexile measure and determine a child’s “true” reading range. It is important to keep in mind that any time we attempt to measure a construct, we are obtaining an estimate. This estimate reflects what we call uncertainty, such as the plus/minus margin in a political poll or the cone used to describe the projected path of a hurricane. If we repeatedly measure a student many times over a short interval, the scores will not all be the same. This fact is true whether we are measuring a construct such as blood pressure or reading ability. The more measures of a construct we obtain, the more confident we can become in estimating the underlying ability. Just like we can be more confident in estimating one’s blood pressure if we get 10 measures spread over a few days as opposed to one in the doctor’s office. Likewise, we can place greater confidence in the inferences we draw about a student’s reading ability if we can have many estimates (test scores) spread over a reasonable time period.
Recognizing the need for obtaining multiple measures and the fact that there is uncertainty (the high probability that two test scores will not be identical), we provide the Managing Multiple Measures tool to help teachers and parents manage and use Lexile measures better.
You can use our free, online Lexile Analyzer tool to measure short classroom texts or get an estimated Lexile measure for a book. This is the same tool that MetaMetrics uses to get certified Lexile measures for the full text of books.
Once you register for the Lexile Analyzer, please follow the guidelines in the user guide for preparing a text and for sampling from a book. If you do not follow these guidelines, your Lexile measure or estimate might not be very accurate. Also please know that any measure you get yourself should not be entered into any library catalog or database. Lexile measures can only be certified by MetaMetrics. We stand behind the accuracy of our text measures.
Please click these links to read more if you are a publisher interested in measures for your books, or a partner interested in incorporating Lexile analysis into your assessment or reading product.
You can integrate Lexile measures into your library's online catalog and book search. Although MetaMetrics does not offer this integration service, you can either license the Lexile Book Database from us so you can do it yourself, or work with one of several library automation partners who integrate Lexile measures. See the topics in the "Lexile in the Library" section for more information about these options.
Several assessments linked to the Lexile Framework sell individual licenses, generally to the homeschool market. These include the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests and the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) from Riverside Publishing, the Stanford and Iowa achievement tests distributed through BJU Press Testing and Evaluation, and an online reading system called Total Reader.
Click here for more information about these assessments, or read more generally about how Lexile measures can be used in the home.
This is a Lexile code. It gives you more information about a book that relates to its developmental appropriateness, reading difficulty, and common or intended usage. Sometimes a Lexile measure by itself is not enough information to choose a particular book for a particular reader. See our "Lexile Codes" topic for detailed definitions of each code.
Lexile Pathfinders were thematic, ready-made reading lists that you could download and print. We've taken them off the site because we've improved our Find a Book search in order to enable you to make your own Pathfinders quickly and easily. While browsing books in our Find a Book search, add them to your Reading List. You can name, save, email, and print your reading lists.
Yes. Student Lexile measures from different reading tests can be compared. In contrast, grade equivalents from two different reading tests should NOT be compared or interpreted as if they were the same.
If a reading test reports a Lexile measure, it means that one of two important processes has occurred:
1. The test was linked with The Lexile Framework for Reading through a specially designed study. As part of this linking study, students took both the reading test (e.g., state end-of grade test, interim/benchmark assessment, national normative assessment) and a Lexile linking test. Student scores on the tests were then compared and a link was established between the reading test and the Lexile scale. Examples of tests that report Lexile measures for students based on this type of link include many state end-of-grade tests, interim/benchmark assessments and national normative assessments.
2. The reading test was developed in conjunction with MetaMetrics® to report a Lexile measure. Examples of this type of assessment include Achieve3000’s KidBiz3000 and TeenBiz3000, Scholastic Reading Inventory, Voyager’s Passport Reading Journeys Assessment and National Geographic’s Edge Assessments.
For more information and a list of tests that report Lexile measures, please visit the following Lexile.com pages: State Assessments; Norm-Referenced & Interim/Benchmark Assessments; Spanish Assessments; International Assessments; and Reading Programs.
When comparing scores from two different tests, it is important to understand the tests you are comparing. First, you should understand the purpose of the tests (e.g., summative, progress-monitoring, high-stakes, low-stakes), how they were designed (e.g., computer-adaptive, fixed-form, wide or narrow difficulty range), and what type of reader the tests were designed to measure (e.g., struggling reader, advanced reader, all readers in general). Knowing these details about the tests will help you understand why student scores may be different from one test to the next. For example, students may perform differently on a high-stakes test (e.g., state end-of-grade test) when compared with results from a low-stakes, progress-monitoring test due to motivational factors. In addition, the two tests being compared may have different psychometric properties (e.g., different reliabilities), which will also affect how similar the test results are likely to be. All of these factors can result in the same student receiving different Lexile measures from different tests. Indeed, it is highly unlikely for a student to receive identical measures (Lexile measure or otherwise) from taking two equivalent forms of the same test (e.g., the SAT) given the normal measurement error of a test and a student. For more detailed information, please read the following white papers: “Why Do Scores Change?” and “Managing Multiple Measures” at www.Lexile.com.
Although the ATOS 2000 scale has a range similar to that of the Lexile scale, it is NOT the Lexile scale and SHOULD NOT be interpreted as such.
The Lexile scale is a developmental scale for measuring reader ability and text complexity, ranging from below 200L for beginning readers and beginning-reader materials to above 1700L for advanced readers and materials. Both Lexile reader measures and Lexile text measures can be placed on the same Lexile scale. More than a decade of research went into developing The Lexile Framework for Reading—so that students’ Lexile measures can be used to match them with appropriate reading materials at the right Lexile level. Lexile measures are one of the most widely adopted reading measures in use today. A list of assessments and reading programs that utilize the Lexile scale to report Lexile measures can be found on the following Lexile.com pages: State Assessments; Norm-Referenced & Interim/Benchmark Assessments; Spanish Assessments; International Assessments; and Reading Programs.A list of library services and content providers who offer Lexile measures is available on the following Lexile.com pages: Content Aggregator Partners; Catalog Automation Partners; and Wholesalers and Distributor Partners. You can also search for books with Lexile measures using “Find a Book” at www.lexile.com/findabook.
The ATOS 2000 book levels are produced by Renaissance Learning, Inc. and are used in the company’s reading products. The ATOS 2000 book levels are based on a formula that Renaissance Learning developed to convert its grade-based ATOS book levels into its 2000-point scale. The company developed this scale with NO consultation with MetaMetrics®; accordingly, the ATOS 2000 scale should not be used as a way to equate ATOS book levels with Lexile text measures. The ATOS 2000 scale also should not be used to match readers with texts when using the Lexile measure of the text.
A simple comparison between ATOS book levels, their corresponding ATOS 2000 book levels, and the books’ Lexile measures demonstrates the problem in trying to equate an ATOS 2000 book level with a Lexile text measure. According to charts published by Renaissance Learning, books at the ATOS 9.5 level are given the ATOS 2000 level of 1258. When the books at ATOS 9.5 level on the AR Bookfinder™ website were matched with books in “Find a Book” using title and ISBN, only one book had a Lexile measure of 1260L. The average Lexile measure of the sample was 1193L and the books ranged in difficulty from 1060L to 1340L.
MetaMetrics recommends reading books within a Lexile range of difficulty 100L below to 50L above the reader’s Lexile measure. The actual Lexile range of books identified by Renaissance Learning as being at the ATOS 9.5/ATOS 2000 1258 book level falls as low as 200L below the targeted level of 1258. For readers at this level, a 200L difference in Lexile text measure represents a 13% difference in forecasted comprehension, which is a substantial departure from targeted comprehension. The size of this difference underscores the need to avoid using ATOS 2000 book levels to represent Lexile measures.
No. Much has been written about the problems with grade equivalents and common misconceptions about their use (e.g., AERA/APA/NCME, 1985; Airasian, 1994; Miller, Linn, & Gronlund, 2009; Stiggins, 1997). In 1991, The International Reading Association (IRA) crafted a resolution about the misuse of grade equivalents and stated that it “strongly advocates that those who administer standardized reading tests abandon the practice of using grade equivalents to report performance of either individuals or groups of test takers…” (IRA, 1991). MetaMetrics® has summarized the concerns about grade equivalents in the paper entitled “The Hippocratic Oath and Grade Equivalents.”
Grade equivalents are based on norming information from the student sample who took the test as part of the norming group. These student samples (the norming group) vary from test publisher to test publisher, so results cannot be assumed to be equivalent. The student scores are not linked back to a common scale through special studies using the same students. Each grade-equivalent study only reflects the characteristics of that unique norming group.
For example, imagine that State A and State B decide to report scores on their reading tests on a scale that ranges from 100 to 200. Both states also decide to set the 150 score point at the level achieved by students at the 50th percentile in their grade. Both state tests would report the score 150, but the actual reading ability represented by the score may be very different because the reading ability of the students in each state whose test scores were used to determine the percentile ranks may be different. It would be misleading to assume that a student who receives a score of 150 on State Test A has the same reading ability as a student who receives a score of 150 on State Test B. All we know for sure is that both students are at the 50th percentile of the norming group used to develop the scale for the test. This same situation can be observed when grade equivalents are used to report the results from two independent tests.
Both the Lexile range and Renaissance Learning’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) range are based on the premise that students can optimize their reading growth if they read books at a level that is appropriately challenging. The books should be challenging enough so that new learning occurs (e.g., the student encounters some new vocabulary), but not too difficult that students get frustrated and give up. However, the actual recommended reading ranges for the two systems are quite different.
A student’s Lexile range is the suggested range of Lexile measures between which the reader should be reading. The Lexile range of a reader is from 100L below to 50L above his or her Lexile measure. For example, a student with a Lexile measure of 750L is encouraged to select books with Lexile measures between 650L and 800L. This recommended Lexile range of -100L to +50L does not change according to the student’s Lexile measure, which helps to ensure that students at all levels are reading books at an appropriate level of complexity. Of course, students should never be discouraged from reading a book based on its Lexile measure alone. Reading books outside of the recommended Lexile range is fine, but these books may pose extra challenge or be less challenging than those within the recommended Lexile range.
Renaissance Learning’s ZPD ranges are found on the company’s goal-setting chart and vary according to the student’s reading level. For example, the ZPD range of a student at the grade equivalent of 5.0 is 3.4 to 5.4, a range that spans two grade levels. The ZPD range of a student at a reading level of 12.0 is 4.9 to 12.0, a range that spans seven grade levels. Students who select books along this full range may not be presented with enough challenging material to encourage reading growth.