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How Lexile leveling works

Lexile measures are based on over 30 years of research and are the most widely adopted measure of reading ability and text difficulty.

Lexile measures help educators and students select books at a level that will challenge them - not so difficult as to be frustrating, but difficult enough to encourage reading growth.

How Lexile leveling measures students

The LitPro Test

This computer-adaptive test measures a student's reading comprehension using authentic passages from fiction and non-fiction texts

The student gets a Lexile measure when he or she completes the LitPro Test
How Lexile leveling measures texts
Objective measure

Lexile text measure

Based on computer analysis of semantic elements of whole prose text

Word frequency

Sentence length

Subjective factors

Teacher/student judgment

Student support, background knowledge or motivation

Theme

Content

Age appropriateness
Student's lexile level
520L

Text Lexile level
560L

Comprehensive way of matching readers to books