Lexile is just one measure, and it's kind of BS that his teacher is making everything related to lexile. Once you get past a certain point, lexile, IMO, becomes less useful, and certainly for his age group. I used lexile for less than 1 year in my 9th grade class, before dropping it because of its limitations.

There's a lot of criticism of the system out there, and of course I can't find anything right now except this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexile#Criticisms

Stacey. Former high school teacher, back in the corporate world, mom to 2 bright girls: DD12 & DD7.