Interpretation and Use

What are grade-level norms for students?

Because of the decision to anchor the Lexile oral reading measure to the existing Lexile scale, the Lexile silent reading norms can be used as an estimate of norms (i.e., preliminary/pseudo norms) for oral reading ability until MetaMetrics has gathered enough data from students receiving Lexile oral reading measures to develop Lexile oral reading user norms. Although individuals may vary with respect to whether their Lexile oral reading measure is higher or lower than the Lexile (silent) reading norms, MM has found that the means, standard deviations, and percentiles at the population level are generally consistent between silent reading and oral reading. Therefore, person ability norms can be estimated from Lexile (silent) reading norms by grade (MetaMetrics, 2020).

Grade	Middle-of-Year Percentile
	5th	25th	50th	75th	90th
1	BR320L	BR120L	85L	290L	505L
2	BR10L	170L	355L	545L	735L
3	250L	415L	590L	760L	935L
4	485L	635L	790L	950L	1110L
5	625L	770L	925L	1075L	1235L
6	705L	855L	1010L	1160L	1320L
7	775L	925L	1080L	1230L	1390L
8	835L	985L	1140L	1295L	1455L
9	890L	1040L	1195L	1345L	1505L
10	935L	1195L	1240L	1395L	1555L
11 & 12	975L	1130L	1285L	1440L	1600L

What is the “match” between a student’s oral reading and a passage’s oral readability measure?

MetaMetrics is researching the optimal match for effective oral reading practice. However, remember that a key goal for students is to read grade-level text fluently. With this in mind, have students practice reading texts with oral readability measures that fall within their grade's typical oral readability ranges (see How are WCPM and accuracy scores calculated in the OR API?). A student reading grade-level passages fluently can be further challenged by reading passages at steadily increasing Lexile oral readability measures.

Can a student’s oral reading measure be used to match them to books that have silent reading Lexile text measures?

No. Matching students using measures from different frameworks is not recommended. Matching readers and texts should only be done within the same framework. Use the Lexile reading measure (silent reading comprehension measure) to match students with a text using its Lexile text measure. However, because the Lexile frameworks were all designed to report measures on the Lexile scale, comparing student results across them is appropriate. For example, suppose a student’s Lexile oral reading measure is substantially lower than their Lexile reading measure. In that case, the student should focus on oral reading practice to build reading accuracy and speed. If, on the other hand, a student’s oral reading measure is much higher than their Lexile reading measure, it could indicate that the student has proficiency in decoding and word recognition but doesn’t understand the meaning of the words and passage. This student would benefit from vocabulary-building activities and comprehension instruction.

Is there a Lexile Oral Reading Framework for Spanish?

There is not yet an Oral Reading Framework for Spanish. Developing a Spanish oral reading framework may be a future research program; we will update the FAQ when we have results to share.