What is a Lexile Score and why does it matter?

Here is a concise, one minute video explaining what Lexile Scores are, created by Horry County Schools in South Carolina...



In the company's own words:

The Lexile Framework measures reading ability and text complexity on the same developmental scale. Unlike other measurement systems, the Lexile Framework determines reading ability based on actual assessments, rather than generalized age or grade levels. Today, nearly half of the U.S. state education agencies have linked their statewide assessments to the Lexile scale.

With the release of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010, there has been a renewed interest in the importance of text complexity. In fact, the staircase of text complexity leading to college and career readiness is denominated in Lexile bands:

Having reader ability and text complexity on the same scale can inform classroom practice for more efficient learning and allow teachers the opportunity to more effectively scaffold instruction leading to the rigorous college and career levels.

The connection and importance of text complexity for college and career readiness was documented in a January 2012 report issued by the Institute of Education Sciences. This report indicates that Lexile measures are the most easily accessible and inexpensive indicators used to track student growth toward college and career readiness.

The company that created Lexile Scores, MetaMetrics®, has been around "for more than twenty years" so this is not new stuff; the books you may buy from your kids' Scholastic flyers have had books with scores on them for quite a while. However, with the adoption of Common Core, Lexile Scores are being increasingly used to keep kids reading on the proper level, and as you can see from the chart above (and this PDF from the CC website), they've actually been incorporated right into the Common Core. So people are taking a closer look.

On the surface, grading books for difficulty sounds like a really great idea. I myself have used the scales when looking for books for my 7th grader, on or slightly above the level of books his teacher had him reading. But an article showed up in one of the Facebook CC groups I belong to, entitled "Federal Bureaucrats Declare 'Hunger Games' More Complex Than 'The Grapes of Wrath' The Common Core's absurd new reading guidelines". Honestly, I didn't even read it, because I always try to look through every book my 7th grader reads to make sure they are all appropriate for him. So Lexile Scores didn't mean much to me. Until yesterday, when he was on the website Newsela at home, and I started asking him about it.

My first concern when my 7th grader told me that he uses a website to grade his reading was privacy, which for me personally, is the absolute greatest problem to come with this new school reform. So I got on the site and found that his privacy is not compromised (though I would have preferred he use a fake name for the site) and all they have is his name. And of course, all of his "articles" and scoring on them. But boy, was I was surprised to find this:




Check out that blue chart thing on the right. It enables my son to lower the Lexile Score of the article if it's too hard.

Here's a photo of the article with a Lexile Score of 750:
And here is the same article with a Lexile Score of 1000:

I have to be honest, I still couldn't see this as a bad thing; clearly the scoring was well thought out and made perfect sense. However, since Lexile Scores are now obviously becoming more of a part of my kids' everyday lives, it behooved me to go back and read that article I passed over.

And I have to say I was seriously surprised that the very first paragraph reads:

Here’s a pop quiz: according to the measurements used in the new Common Core Standards, which of these books would be complex enough for a ninth grader?

a. Huckleberry Finn
b. To Kill a Mockingbird
c. Jane Eyre
d. Sports Illustrated for Kids' Awesome Athletes!

The only correct answer is “d,” since all the others have a “Lexile” score so low that they are deemed most appropriate for fourth, fifth, or sixth graders.

Yikes! Perhaps the grading on these things is not as well though out as I assumed! Other interesting observations:

When Huckleberry Finn isn’t complex enough for our high-school students, I can’t help wondering if we need to change the way we conceptualize literary complexity... Slaughterhouse Five... with a score of only 870... is only a fourth-grade read. By these standards Mr. Popper’s Penguins (weighing in at a respectable 910) is deemed more complex.

MetaMetrix, makers of Lexile, has responded to these complaints with a six minute YouTube video:

Lexile measures do NOT indicate anything about quality... A high Lexile measure does NOT mean that it's well written. In fact it may be poorly argued, or convoluted.

And in this video, MetaMatrix tells us:

When we talk about text complexity what we mean is the words that are being used, and sentence length.

This blog post by Mike Mullin, author of Ashfall, which was named one of the top 5 YA [Young Adults] novels of 2011 by WNPR, does an excellent job of stating the big problem with all of this:

Good writing is simple. The best writers never use two words where one will do, and they choose their words with precision. But the Lexile system rewards complexity and obscurity by assigning higher Lexile scores for works with longer sentences and longer words.

Mr. Mullin uses the following example to illustrate:

Here's the first sentence of a book that sixth-grader would have been allowed to read, a book with a Lexile of 1650:

“On the theory that our genuine impulses may be connected with our childish experiences, that one's bent may be tracked back to that "No-Man's Land" where character is formless but nevertheless settling into definite lines of future development, I begin this record with some impressions of my childhood.”

Forty-eight words that can be replaced by three with no loss of meaning: 'My childhood was.' This is a truly awful opening, whatever your opinion of the overall work.

Here's a novel millions of sixth-graders have enjoyed. A novel with a Lexile of only 820. A novel this woman's [sixth grade] daughter would not be allowed to read:

“They say Maniac Magee was born in a dump. They say his stomach was a cereal box and his heart a sofa spring. They say he kept an eight-inch cockroach on a leash.”

It's clear and concise. It introduces the main character and opens irresistible story questions in the reader's mind. If it were rewritten as one sentence, it would lose the flavor of gossip that makes it intriguing--and have a much higher Lexile score.

Perhaps we need to go back to letting our children's family and friends and teachers and librarians recommend good books, instead of letting a computer do it by measuring the number of words in a sentence, and counting the number of "big" words throughout a book.