The Hell of School Lexile Ratings

Remember when reading could be a fun escape and not a strenuous chore that made your entire family have to jump through hoops?  I do.  However, many public schools have decided to destroy reading being a positive thing and are turning it into a nightmare – and more, needless stress on already anxiety-riddled students.

A while ago I wrote a blog on why Lexile levels are basically a made up and evil thing to thrust more work on the children while the teachers have to sit back and do nothing additional to force all this extra work.  You can find that post here:  https://tryingtomom.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/lexile-levels-the-new-way-schools-are-ruining-your-children/

To this day, I still ask my children’s teachers about how these books are scored and why the system seems to frivolously assign numbers to books – and, to this day, the teachers don’t have a straight answer.  They’ll tell me to “go online,” or something like that, which translates (in my mind) as “we have no idea, we’re just forced to force your child into this mess.”  I’ve even had friends who are teachers say Lexile levels are junk and no one, not even the Lexile company, can effectively explain them, or why the Lexile numbers will change on different, unedited prints of the same title.

TODAY, I’d like to share with you the process of helping a child with their reading homework in 2016.

1. The teacher will send home something that tells you how many books your child must test on in the quarter.  Your child can read any book in their Lexile level that has a corresponding A.R. test, so that the teachers never have to be bothered to create tests or grade papers again.  The number of books required tends to run about one book per week in our district.
2. Your school’s library will inevitably be “short” on books that are a) in your child’s Lexile level, b) have an online A.R. test available, and c) are age appropriate.  For example, my son’s Lexile puts him in with Anne Rice and Steven Hawkin – neither of which are appropriate for an 11-year-old.
3. In a desperate attempt to help your kid not fail their reading class, you go to Lexile.com to search for a book by Lexile and age range.  You also may need to sacrifice a small animal to their webmaster – because that search feature RARELY works on demand, and the Lexile levels are changed on books so often that you can’t trust lists you find on other websites.  Actually, it happens so much that many times the Lexile.com site will say one level, and the A.R. testing site will say another!  Prepare to be doomed no matter what!
4. Once you finally locate a list of books, you have to arbookfind.com and verify that any book you want has an online A.R. test.  If it does not, tracking that book down is a waste of your time, grade-wise.
5. If the book has an A.R. test, then you must go to the Renaissance Home Connect website, log in with your child’s school information, and make sure they haven’t already taken a test on the book you’re looking at now.  Please note, even though you can easily access all of this at home, the A.R. tests can only be accessed at school – meaning all the more stress on your child when the media center gets shut down randomly and they cannot test for days/weeks at a time while their deadline ticks away.  Totally fair, right?
6. Finally, kneel down and pray to any entity you think might help you – because now you have to track down the books.  I am very lucky, because our county library has an online system where I can see what they have, place holds, and special order books to be sent from other libraries.  Many others are not that fortunate and will have to go to the library and ask a librarian for help in finding or placing holds on the books you need.  HOPEFULLY, those books will arrive well before your child runs out of time.
7. Get the books in your hands, have your child read them, then watch as the school frivolously “upgrades” your kid to a higher Lexile level – leaving all the books you found worthless for their grade needs.

If you have a merciful teacher, they will count POINTS, not the number of tests taken.  I have heard such teachers exist, but I have yet to meet one.  If the points idea seems confusing:  a simple Mo Willems book (he writes Elephant and Piggie, and that weird little Pigeon guy) might be worth 0.5 points and have a Lexile of 50L, whereas one of the Harry Potter books comes up at 38.0 points and 1000L.

Obviously, if you read Harry Potter, you spent a lot more time on one book, just due to the number of pages alone – hence, more points.  However, when quantity is all that matters, the 5th grade kid who reads at the Mo Willems level will be able to read and take nine online tests significantly faster than the 5th grade child who reads Rowling.  It leaves the higher Lexile level holders at a disadvantage, if not a punishment (because one Harry Potter chapter will have more words than twenty Mo Willems books).  The kids who have to read longer, more challenging novels are still forced to read nine books in nine weeks, on top of all other schoolwork and state testing nonsense, and those kids are often stressed out beyond belief trying to meet their frivolously assigned reading goals.

Lexile levels just seem like the broken BFF of the Common Core system, and both need to get the heck out education!  Let individualized reading get out of the grading process and become a source of simple entertainment again!  Kids have to put up with a lot of crap at school, and they should have mental freedom coming from somewhere.