Why is comprehension set at 75% with the Lexile Framework?
A primary use of Lexile measures is for forecasting how well readers will comprehend texts. A reader with a measure of 600L who is given a text measured at 600L is expected to have a 75% comprehension rate. This is the “default” setting within the Lexile Framework. This value was selected to ensure that when a text’s measure matches a reader’s measure, the reading experience is not so hard that the reader experiences frustration and loses the meaning-thread of the text, but is not so easy that the reader does not encounter any new vocabulary or sentence structures that help grow him or her as a reader.
