At Englist we are lucky to have many students who are strong readers. Most parents are proud of their kids and push them to do their best.
However, one of the conversations we have most often with parents is about student reading levels. Sometimes we assess students at a lower reading level than parents expect. When this happens, the parent may take issue with our judgement and tell us that their child actually reads at such and such Lexile level.
While we understand why parents want to rely on Lexile as a reference tool, we need to understand why it isn’t helpful and why we don’t use it at Englist.
How Lexile works (and doesn’t work)
Lexile, or more formally the “Lexile Framework for Reading,” is a quantitative, formulaic measure of text difficulty invented by the edtech company MetaMetrics. MetaMetrics uses a computer program to analyze the difficulty of a text based on the vocabulary and syntax of a book.
Lexile offers no measure of the qualitative elements of a text. In other words, it offers no commentary on the topic of a book, nor its social context, cultural relevance, or whether or not a book is any good. However, these qualitative elements – the story, the cultural background, the writing style – are more important in determining difficulty than the vocabulary and grammar.
Here’s a clear example: Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White’s beloved children’s novel about a girl, her pig, and his spider friend, has a Lexile score of 680. The Sun Also Rises, often cited as Ernest Hemingway’s greatest novel and one of the most important of the 20th century, has a Lexile of 610. If you just went by Lexile score, you’d be more likely to recommend Hemingway to your fourth grader than the obvious choice of Charlotte’s Web.
Charlotte’s Web’s style is clear and conversational, but E.B. White was a master of description and imagery that requires compound sentences. More important than sentence length, however, are the themes in Charlotte’s Web. These include change, growing up, the cycle of life and death, and friendship, all of which White presents in a way children can relate to.
The Sun Also Rises is inappropriate for fourth graders, but Lexile would tell you different. Hemingway’s novel handles themes like post-World War 1 disillusionment, the Lost Generation, and the complexities of love and sex. Without understanding the historical context of the First World War, and without the maturity to handle these themes, Hemingway’s novel will obviously be lost on young readers.
And you can really run with this dynamic. There is violent, explicit, and horrifying writing out there that Lexile would tell you is a good fit for elementary students.
So, if the “objectivity” of Lexile doesn’t work, how can parents know their child’s reading level, or if a given book is a good fit for their kids?
Simple. Ask a teacher.
How do we assess reading level at Englist?
Lexile uses an algorithm to determine difficulty and student reading level in a vacuum.
At Englist we judge reading ability by listening to kids read and then talking to them about what they have read.
This might sound simple, even reductive, but it’s the best way to assess student reading ability.
Education researchers point out that being able to answer questions about what you read is one of the most effective ways to assess student level. We do this in a few different ways.
First, on our assessments, we have reading passages that teachers listen to students read aloud. Then students must read questions about the passage and respond in writing.
For example, a junior high student might come into Englist and read the first few paragraphs of Neil Gaiman’s short story “Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains”. Here is the text students would see:
“Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman
You ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did. But I will not forgive myself for the year that I hated my daughter, when I believed her to have run away, perhaps to the city. During that year I forbade her name to be mentioned, and if her name entered my prayers when I prayed, it was to ask that she would one day learn the meaning of what she had done, of the dishonour that she had brought to my family, of the red that ringed her mother’s eyes.
I hate myself for that, and nothing will ease that, not even what happened that night, on the side of the mountain.
I had searched for nearly ten years, although the trail was cold. I would say that I found him by accident, but I do not believe in accidents. If you walk the path, eventually you must arrive at the cave.
Reading questions:
- What does the narrator mean when he says “the red that ringed her mother’s eyes.”?
- What does the narrator mean when he says “the trail was cold.”?
- Why did the narrator hate himself?
- Where did the narrator’s daughter run away to?
The difficulty in this text is not in its sentence length, nor in the difficulty of the language. This passage is difficult because readers must keep specific information in mind from earlier in the text to understand it.
The assessing teacher first listens to the student read this excerpt aloud. If students can pronounce most of the words on the first try, sound out the ones they don’t immediately know, and read at a conversational pace, teachers know the student is likely able to comprehend the text.
Once the student finishes reading, the teacher asks the student to say the underlined words again and asks if the student knows what they mean. “Dishonor” is a complex idea, so students may struggle explaining it. However, if students don’t know what “mention” or “forbid” mean, they might not have strong enough vocabulary for a seventh grade level class.
Then students would write their responses to the reading questions as part of their assessment.
- They would need to respond with complete sentences (and understand what a “complete sentence” is).
- Questions 1 and 2 require students to have enough reading experience to know some common English idioms.
- Question 3 asks students to look at when the narrator says “I hate myself for that” and go back through the text to ascertain what “that” refers to (in this case, it’s the year he hated his daughter because he thought she ran away).
- Question 4 is trickier, as the answer is that the narrator’s daughter didn’t run away, he only thought she did.
If students can answer all four of these questions, they are at least seventh grade level readers. If they miss questions 3 or 4, teachers need to use their judgement based on other sections of the assessment. If students can’t answer questions 1 and 2, then they are having trouble understanding the passage.
Once students are in class, they do “guided reading”. We ask kids to read out loud as well as listen to the teacher and other students read, and then, if there is time, they read independently. Teachers routinely stop the reading and discuss with the class as they read. In this way, teachers not only hear how students are doing in terms of reading fluency, which is itself a strong indicator of comprehension, but teachers can also spot-check for comprehension as students read.
Finally, we ask students to write about what they have read. In Fundamentals classes, students must answer comprehension questions about the texts they read in class. When they read novels, they often must complete written responses discussing the books they read.
Students in the academic writing classes do similar but more complex work. Each class, students must answer reading questions about reading assignments. Furthermore, each semester students complete writing tasks where they analyze literary elements like themes, characters, and authorial intent in books we read as a class.
In short, if kids are struggling to comprehend a book, we are going to catch it. And because our teachers have spent so long teaching and have read so many books with so many kids, and because they know your kids and how strong their reading is, the best way to find out about your student’s actual reading level is to ask us (or come to parent-teacher meetings, or read our blogs and reports, or just send us a message).
If you need to know if a book is a good fit, or if you need a list of recommended books, that’s what we’re here for. We love to answer questions about what kids can read.
Why you should listen to us instead of Lexile
You might be wondering, “Why should I listen to your teachers instead of Lexile?” and that’s a fair question.
However, in our professional opinions, Lexile is a poor measure of reading comprehension. It’s an algorithmic sausage-factory that oversimplifies reading comprehension, which it is unable to meaningfully assess.
But don’t just take our word for it. According to Stephen Krashen, one of the most prominent professors of education in the U.S. and an expert in the field of language acquisition, the Lexile framework is “unnecessary and potentially harmful”.
Krashen points out that you don’t need a Lexile score to know if a book is too easy or too hard; just have your child open it up and read a few pages. If they can understand and enjoy it, then it’s a good choice of a book.
Furthermore, Lexile scores can scare parents and students away from books that they might enjoy. There is value in reading books that are “too easy”. Attempting a book that is “too hard” can be an enriching challenge.
Finally, as mentioned, teaching reading and understanding reading levels is our profession. We are experts at it, and we have the added benefit of knowing your kids.
The corporation that invented Lexile presents it as an objective measure of reading level. Administrators and parents who don’t know how to gauge reading level believe them because there is a lot of arcane math involved. Offloading nuanced decision-making to a big company that gives you a distilled number feels easier. But just because it’s a formula doesn’t mean it’s not subjective, or even really scientific.
Education is a social exchange, a human-driven process, and reading comprehension is best assessed in this spirit.
Rather than waste your time (or your school district’s money) adhering to an over-engineered corporate “solution” like Lexile, just ask teachers about reading level. We love to help.