El Sistema Lexile para Leer
LINKING ASSESSMENT WITH READING INSTRUCTION

Download El Sistema Lexile para Leer Overview (PDF)

Making Test Scores Actionable
Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act (ESEA, 2002) enables limited English proficient students to be assessed for content (Reading and Mathematics) in their native language for up to three years. Scores on these assessments provide important measures of student proficiency in content areas, but they are often static. The data can’t be used to inform instruction or to help educators and parents select appropriate reading materials based on each child’s ability. Educators and parents are also left wondering how to close the Hispanic achievement gap.

El Sistema Lexile para Leer changes that. When a Spanish-version assessment is linked to El Sistema Lexile, students’ test scores immediately become actionable. Lexiles, available in English and Spanish, are the most widely adopted reading measure in use today, measuring both reader ability and text difficulty on the same scale. Spanish Lexiles are a powerful tool for linking Spanish-version assessments with instruction across the curriculum, at home and in the library, by taking the guesswork out of selecting materials that can help to improve student reading ability.

Matching Readers and Text
Consider this: a father takes his son to the store to buy shoes. The salesperson asks them, “What kind of shoes do you need?” The father replies, “He needs basketball shoes.” As the salesperson leads them to the basketball shoes, he asks, “How old is your son?” The father answers, “He is 12.” And so the salesperson points to five pairs of shoes on the wall and says, “There are our age-12 basketball shoes.”

Not likely, right? We do not buy shoes by age, we buy them by size. However, for years we have matched students to books and other learning materials based on age or grade level. If a student likes science fiction books and is nine years old or in fourth grade, he is given “fourth-grade science fiction” to read. But what if that fourth grader’s reading ability is far higher than the “average” student his age, or he is not quite reading on a fourth-grade level? Like the boy’s age-12 basketball shoes, the text simply does not fit the student.

When shoe shopping, the scale used to measure the boy’s foot for his sneakers tells you his shoe size, not his age. Similarly, El Sistema Lexile measures a student’s reading ability, not his grade level. With Lexiles, assessment results are used to ensure a “good fit” because the measure is used to select reading material that meets and challenges each student’s ability.

Differentiating Instruction Across the Curriculum
Hispanic children compose the second-largest student population enrolled in public schools. Consequently, many educators and administrators are increasing efforts to meet the educational needs of Spanish-speaking students. Spanish Lexiles provide a powerful tool for targeting instruction and improving Hispanic achievement across grade levels and content areas. Using Spanish Lexiles, educators connect students with instructional resources that match their reading abilities in their native language. And the number of fiction and nonfiction books and textbooks with Spanish Lexile measures grows every day.

Consider an educator who is teaching a unit on the Battle of Gettysburg. Typically, a fifth-grade class of 30 students will have a wide range of reading abilities, with only half of those students reading well enough to comprehend the content in the textbook. When the teacher uses the students’ Spanish Lexile measures to connect them with ability-appropriate supplemental materials, they stay on track for meeting state performance standards in social studies and continue to strengthen their reading skills in their native language.

More Information, Not More Testing
Best of all, El Sistema Lexile adds value to state or classroom Spanish-version assessments—adding more information, not more time. It is not another test or a reading intervention program. Spanish Lexiles provide a thermometer for measuring students’ reading abilities in their native language that talented educators, involved parents and motivated students use to improve learning. Spanish Lexile measures tie day-to-day work in the classroom to Spanish-versions of critical high-stakes tests.

Measuring Student Growth on a Common Scale
Many classroom and state-level assessments are linked to El Sistema Lexile. This offers educators and parents a common scale for monitoring student progress throughout the school year and their entire education, regardless of what assessments they take. A Spanish Lexile can provide the same continuity for reading growth that families have when they mark a child’s height on a wall with a pencil. Like the wall, the scale never changes, so progress is easy to see even if the student changes schools, grades or takes a different test. Spanish Lexiles range from below 200L for beginning readers and text to above 1400L for advanced readers and text.

Connecting Students to Lexiles
Spanish Lexile measures may already be available for your students. Thousands of Hispanic students receive a Spanish Lexile measure each year from state or classroom assessments. For a list of standardized assessments and reading programs that are linked to El Sistema Lexile, contact spanish_info@Lexile.com. You may already have access to this actionable tool for linking assessment with instruction.

Building Reading Abilities Year Round
Lexiles also provide parents with a powerful tool for connecting children with reading materials at home. Unlike other test results that simply get posted on the refrigerator or cause parents sleepless nights, Lexiles offer a way to take action. During the summer, after school or on the weekends, families can visit the library or bookstore and use Spanish Lexiles to select leisure-reading materials in Spanish. Or, they can use the Lexile Spanish Book Database and search by author, title or Lexile range. The Spanish book database and other online resources are available at no cost.

Experts agree that the best way to build reading ability is practice. Lexiles provide a way to make that practice meaningful all year round. By reading material at their Lexile level and in their native language, Hispanic students can strengthen Spanish literacy skills and develop a lifelong love of reading which in turn facilitates the task of learning to read in English.

The Science Behind the Lexile Framework
The Lexile Framework for Reading was developed after 20 years of research by psychometricians at MetaMetrics, Inc., a privately held educational measurement company based in Durham, N.C. The company’s research was initially funded with grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health. In 1998, MetaMetrics, Inc. utilized the same two variables underlying the Lexile Framework (semantic difficulty and syntactic complexity) to develop El Sistema Lexile para Leer. Today, MetaMetrics continues to pioneer scientifically based measures of student achievement that help to link assessment with instruction, foster better educational practices and improve learning by matching students with instructional materials that meet and challenge their abilities.

Download El Sistema Lexile para Leer Overview (PDF)

For more information, contact Amber Sandvik, Research Associate, El Sistema Lexile, at 1-888-LEXILES or spanish_info@Lexile.com.