Summary: Lexile-Linked Assessment

Forty-four million adults in the United States are unable to read a simple story to their children, and 50 percent of adults have literacy skills below an eighth grade level (Literacy Project Foundation, 2015). A contributing factor to this situation is that many secondary students are graduating high school with the inability to read at a college and career reading level. Studies have found that only 36 percent of high school seniors performed at or above the proficient reading level, while 27 percent performed below the basic level (U.S. Department of Education, 2013), and only 44 percent of high school students in the United States met the reading-readiness benchmark on the 2013 ACT college entrance exam (Alliance for Excellent Education,

It requires readers to silently read expository and narrative passages that are 400 to 600 words and up to 15 sentences in length within a 35-minute period (Alfassi, 2004; Archer, 2010; Cutting & Scarborough, 2006). Each passage increases in textual difficulty with six to ten comprehension questions that are multiple choice, and questions are answered while the passage is in view (Alfassi, 2004; Archer, 2010; Cutting & Scarborough, 2006). Another commonly used Lexile-linked assessment is the Gray Oral Reading Test-Third Edition. This assessment uses expository and narrative passages like the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test; however, the passages consists of six to seven sentences and are read aloud as quickly as possible (Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Shippen, Houchins, Steventon, &Sartor, 2005). After the student reads a passage aloud, the passage is removed, and the examiner asks five multiple-choice questions. The assessment ends if the student answers three out of five questions incorrectly (Cutting & Scarborough,

Informal assessments determine reading levels as well as provide a personal connection to the text through open-ended questions (Applegate, Quinn, & Applegate, 2002; Bean, Readence, & Baldwin, 2008). One informal method requires students to read a current grade level passage, and if they read 70 and 100 words correctly in one minute with fewer than seven errors, they are reading at grade level (Hawkins, Hale, Sheeley, & Ling, 2011). If they do not meet the requirement, teachers can provide passages that decrease in difficulty until reading level is determined (Hawkins et al., 2011). Content teachers can also use a 400 word passage from their content area and provide the students five minutes to read a passage. Students verbally answer ten short answer questions, and the correct answers are then averaged across the two passages (Alfassi, 2004; Fuchs et al., 2001; Hawkins, Hale, Sheeley, & Ling, 2011; McCallum, Krohn, Skinner, Hilton-Prillhart, Hopkins, Waller, & Polite, 2011). Passage recall is another informal method. Students read a 400 word passage in five minutes and have ten minutes to retell the passage (Fuchs et al.,