TCAP Family Portal Now Includes Lexile Reader Levels for Students
Contact: Casey.Haugner@tn.gov
With the 2022-23 school year in full swing, the Tennessee Department of Education concludes the “Know More, Learn More TN” back to school campaign with an encouragement to all families to support their student’s reading progress by learning about their Lexile level. Newly added this week in the TCAP Family Portal, Lexile levels for each student provide parents and families with the information they need to support their student’s reading skills and find reading materials to match and further develop the student’s reading skills.
Tennessee parents and families with students who took a TCAP ELA assessment in spring 2022 will now see a Lexile Reader Measure in the TCAP Family Portal. Lexile Reader Measures give parents information about their student’s reading progress and help them select reading materials that are matched to their academic needs. A Lexile measure assesses a student’s reading ability and what level of text a student can read and understand on their own.
Aligned to the Tennessee Academic Standards for English language arts, students should read within the range of their grade-band and should also experience supportive texts in the lower ends of the range to prepare them for the more challenging texts in the upper ends of the range.
The Lexile framework and scale for reading complement the state‘s TCAP English language arts assessment to accurately measure each student’s reading level. The Lexile measure is shown as a number with an “L” for Lexile measure and can range from 0L for beginning readers to above 1600L for college-level readers. Books and other texts have a Lexile measure associated with them, which describes how difficult the text is to comprehend. When used together, these measures can help parents and families find a book for their student that is at an appropriate level of difficulty and suggests how well the student will comprehend the text.
In addition to this short video, this one-pager and this graphic, the department has added new resources to the series of customizable communications tools and graphics that can be used across a variety of platforms to promote the TCAP Family Portal – from bulletin boards to social media channels to school websites and parent emails – including:
Visit the department’s TCAP webpage for more information on Tennessee’s assessment program.