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Abstract

A focus of the Common Core State Standards/English Language Arts (CCSS/ELA) is that students become increasingly more capable with complex text over their school careers. This focus has redirected attention to the measurement of text complexity. While suggesting multiple criteria for this task, the CCSS/ELA offers a single measure of text complexity—Lexiles. Additional quantitative data are available—including the two components of a Lexile rating—that can provide more comprehensive views of text complexity. The two “intra-lexile” measures and two others (referential cohesion and an index of words in a text that are predicted to be “hard.”) are applied to sets of exemplars for grade bands 2–3 and 4–5 within the CCSS/ELA. These analyses suggest that conclusions about text complexity vary considerably when multiple quantitative measures, rather than a single, omnibus index, are used.

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Beyond Single Readability Measures: Using Multiple Sources of Information in Establishing Text Complexity

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