5
(Grupo Prisa, n.d.), and literature such as the previously
mentioned examples to help students gain a deeper
understanding of the content they are required to
master.
Stai
rc
as
e
of
C
om
plex
ity
Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards
summarizes the current state of instruction in the U.S.
by noting that while “reading demands of college,
workforce training programs, and citizenship have held
steady or risen over the past fifty years or so, K–12 texts
have, if anything, become less demanding. This finding
is the impetus behind the Standards’ strong emphasis
on increasing text complexity as a key requirement
in reading.” (National Governors Association Center
for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School
Officers, 2010b, p. 2). Judging the appropriate level
of complexity of a given text requires teachers to
apply three measures—quantitative, qualitative, and a
consideration of reader and task.
Quantitative analysis examines those aspects of a
text that can be counted, but which may not be easily
noticed by the reader, such as number of words, mean
sentence length, and word frequency, to name a few.
There are a number of quantitative measures for texts
written in English, including ATOS by Renaissance
Learning, Degrees of Reading Power
®
(DRP
®
) by
Questar Assessment, Inc., Flesch-Kincaid, The Lexile
®
Reading Framework by MetaMetrics, Reading Maturity
by Pearson Education, and SourceRater by Educational
Testing Service. Researchers Jessica Nelson, Charles
Perfetti, and David and Meredith, in conjunction with
Susam Pimentel, lead author of the Common Core State
Standards for English Language Arts, compared all six
quantitative measures and found that all were “reliably
and often highly correlated with grade level and
student performance based measures of text difficulty
across a variety of text sets and reference measures,”
and that any one of the six could be used with texts
from second through twelfth grade. (National Governors
Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief
State School Officers., n.d., p.3). MetaMetrics has created
a quantitative measure of complexity for use with
Spanish texts,
El Sistema Lexile
®
para Leer
(MetaMetrics,
Inc., 2012).
Qualitative measures of text complexity include
those elements that cannot be counted, such as
thematic content, genre (especially poetry and drama),
complexity of format, and the prior knowledge a
reader would need to be able to comprehend the
selection. In contrast to quantitative measures, which
can best be calculated using mathematical formulas
and computer software, qualitative measures depend
on the judgments of human beings with experience
and expertise in the field of education. An example
that demonstrates the importance of using qualitative
measures to judge complexity is Lois Lowry’s
The Giver
(1993). With a Lexile
®
of 760, it falls at the upper end
of the 2nd–3rd grade band and at the lower end of 4th–
5th (National Governors Association Center for Best
Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, n.d.),
but this dystopian novel explores themes and contains
content that makes knowledge and emotional demands
far beyond the capabilities of most students at these
levels.
Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards
provides rubrics for determining the complexity of both
informational and literary texts in the areas of purpose
(meaning in literary texts), structure, language, and
knowledge demands (National Governors Association
Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State
School Officers, 2010b). Qualitative rubrics are being
developed for measuring the complexity of Spanish
texts (San Diego County Office of Education, 2012).
The third measure of text complexity is that of reader
and task. The Common Core states that “the third
element of the three-part model for measuring text
complexity—reader and task considerations—remains
untouched. While the quantitative and qualitative
measures focus on the inherent complexity of the
text, they are balanced in the CCSS’ model by the
expectation that educators will employ professional
judgment to match texts to particular tasks or classes
of students.” (National Governors Association Center for
Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers,
n.d., p. 5)
Therearemany factors that go intoselecting literature for
students. In addition to reading levels, teachers should
consider a student’s interest as well as the knowledge
