Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment This result just in...

I haven't had a test result to share for a while, so I am so excited to have one.

DS13 took a test for lexile placement yesterday and got a reading lexiel of 1448, which, as far as I can tell, is high college level.

What do people know about lexiles? What tests might the teacher have used to assess this level? How accurate are they? Is it similar to the STAR test used to assess AR level (in which I have little faith?).

That's great! From what I recall about DD's, last summer they got her lexile number from reading comprehension, so that's really good.

I'm not familiar with Lexiles but I found this on hoagies:

"Another reading level scale is the Lexile Level. Using the "Search" function on this site, you can determine the Lexile level for various books. Lexile Measure is a number indicating the reading demand of the text in terms of the semantic difficulty (vocabulary) and syntactic complexity (sentence length). The Lexile scale ranges from 200 to 1700 Lexiles, although actual Lexile measures can range from below zero to above 2000 Lexiles."

They provided this link that explains it more.

http://www.lexile.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?view=ed&tabindex=1&tabid=49&tabpageid=545

Sounds like he is doing great!!!!

Here's a poster for some samples at different levels: http://www.lexile.com/uploads/PDF's/LexileMapColor_4-4-07_11x17.pdf
War and Peace is at 1200.... so yes, I'd say that's a great score! But I have no idea what the validity of the measure or the test is either.

I do know that lexile takes into account vocabulary and syntax whereas AR is just vocabulary. But Alida's song on the link you just sent is weird--Gary Paulson must have used some really strange grammar in that book to make that much difference!

Yay! WTG acs's son!

He's having a good year, isn't he? Happy, happy, joy, joy!

I looked up some things on Lexile's yesterday. Quite a few state's achievement tests correspond with lexile's, so a lexile can be received from your state test.
I also got Alida's Song yesterday. It certainly is a strangely classified book; 5.3 AR, 1460 lexile, and I found it in the children's section of the library! Many of Paulsen's books are in the teen section. I usually read his books before letting GS9 read them, so I read this one. I'm going to ask the library to put it in the teen section. I'll allow GS9 to read it but I don't think the book is geared toward elementary interest level. I'm not sure what earned it the 1460 lexile. There are some foreign words, the main characters were Norwegian descendants.

Anyway, it appears Lexiles are a better guage of a child's reading ability than AR, so acs, your son is doing quite well. I'd think that's an additional confirmation that the school and you are doing a good job with his educational opportunities.

OHG, Thanks for looking into Alida's song for me! I'll bet it was the Norwegian that drove it up that high, but it still seems odd. Most of the 1400+L books that I found on the lexile site are college texts books and academic reports, so it seems odd to find a children's book (or even a young adult book)in that level. Heck, it is higher than Don Quixote!

Thanks for the compliment but I'm not sure I or the school can really take credit for his level. To be quite honest, I'm not seeing him read anything that is much different than other bright kids his age. DS has a PhD in English, though, so maybe it's just genetic!

I read a page of Alida's song on Amazon.com and I was surprised that the lexile level was that high, but I find an explanation for the high level: www.lexile.com/newsletter/mar02-newsletter.pdf

Thanks, Lori, that solves the mystery. I guess we should be looking for "NC" (non-conforming) books on the lexile measure, since those are the ones that have higher reading levels than content maturity. Good to know!