Literacy Levels
About Leveled Systems
Reading Level Conversion Chart
About Reading Leveled Systems
Schools often use various reading level systems to assess and track their students’ reading comprehension skills. Each reading level system uses a different algorithm to analyze the text within a book. Levels are assigned to books, and students assessments are used to determine which “level” is most suitable for that child at the given moment. Lexile measures, for example, analyze semantic difficulty (word frequency or repetition) and syntactic complexity whereas Accelerated Reader assesses books based on page count, number of syllables per word, and average words per sentence. Guided Reading Levels analyzes word count, semantic difficulty, sentence length, and sentence complexity. While these systems may seem somewhat similar, the weight each places on different data points varies and, as such, books are ‘leveled’ quite differently. One might assume that book might at least appear in the same order from one metric to another, but this is not the always the case.
Numerically Based Literacy Levels
Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA)
The DRA assessment measures skills in nine categories of reading behavior and six types of errors.
Rausch Unit (RIT)
RIT scores are provided by the NWEA MAP Test. The NWEA MAP test is an adaptive assessment. As such, the MAP test provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate reading comprehension skills below, at, or above grade level.
Lexile Framework for Reading
The Lexile Framework for Reading matches students’ reading levels with texts. A student’s Lexile score can be assessed by several different standardized tests and reading programs. Parents, students, and teachers can browse books by Lexile Measure.
Alphabetically Based Literacy Levels
Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA)
The DRA assessment measures skills in nine categories of reading behavior and six types of errors.
Rausch Unit (RIT)
RIT scores are provided by the NWEA MAP Test. The NWEA MAP test is an adaptive assessment. As such, the MAP test provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate reading comprehension skills below, at, or above grade level.
