Validation Analysis During the Design Stage of Text Leveling
Jerome V. D’Agostino, Connie Briggs · Education Sciences · 2025
Using leveled books to ascertain students’ reading levels has been found to yield scores that are not sufficiently reliable and that lack criterion-related validation evidence. One reason for these findings is the sole reliance on content validation to level books. We present in this study a demonstration of an integrated leveling process for assessing the complexity of text passages. The procedure, which capitalizes on conventional test development practices such as field-testing items, contains a built-in validation process that allows for the selection of text that falls along a confirmed gradient of difficulty, from easy to advance levels of challenge. The integrated leveling process applies both well-established procedures for assessing text levels of complexity as well as a thorough item analysis of the books through pretesting. The resulting assessment tool provides rich information to identify student competencies and needs, inform instructional decisions, and document progress.