Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment why do the lexile levels I find online vary so?

Two problems I've found with Lexile. On Lexile.com, one title will have several different lexile scores. Some are attributable to it being abridged or edited, but not all - why? Second, Lexile doesn't seem to take into account older language or older sentence style. For example, Pride and Prejudice comes in at 770, but Harry Potter is 880-1080. Never mind the content or if it would be interesting to a child, you hand those two books to a kid, have them read a couple pages and ask them which is easier to understand. Which do you think is the easier read (if you've read both). My DS11 was gloating about his good reading (1490L) so I gave him Jane Austen and said, "Read this". He struggled through a few pages and I reminded him one can always get better at reading.