Criticizes a study of the reliability and validity of curriculum-based reading inventories by L. S. Fuchs, D. Fuchs, and S. L. Deno and raises questions regarding the study's internal and external validity. (AEA)

Validates the college-level designation of the Fry Graph using comparative validity data. (AEA)

Provides guidelines for analyzing and evaluating textbooks based on their comprehensibility rather than their readability. (MKM)

Reports two investigations, one related to the readability of certain basal readers and the other related to teacher knowledge of varying levels of readability of textbooks.

Finds that student perceptions of readability and interest levels in two upper-level college composition texts varied from the Flesch and the Fry readability and human interest formulas. (SR)

A study analyzed the readability of seven central Florida newspapers (one of which is a college newspaper) and "USA Today.""Rightwriter," a grammar checker and readability computer program, was used to evaluate front page articles for each of the eight newspapers. The readability formulas invoked in the readability program…

A survey of the current research on readability formulas is presented in this paper, which distinguishes this research from research on the more general questions that surround formulas: What features of a text, particularly the language it is written in, make the text easy or difficult to read? and, What will predict that readers with particular…

Acknowledging widely recognized shortcomings of readability formulas, the authors propose a technique for analyzing syntactic complexity. (RB)

Readability formulas were originally conceived of as being evaluative measures. However, if a text is being rewritten or revised so that it matches a particular level of ability in its intended readers, it is rather inescapable that readability formulas will influence the changes made. Tacitly or not, formulas now are used to diagnose what causes…

Although research on readability is still in its infancy, studies have been conducted concerning typographical features, semantic and pragmatic facets, linguistic factors, and orthographic dimensions. This paper discusses readability formulas, pointing out their limitations and listing 13 generalizations about them. The paper also outlines…

Readability formulas estimate how difficult text is to read. The resulting "readability level" helps teachers and school librarians match students to appropriate books. Guiding students to appropriate-level books is now easier and more accurate with the ATOS (Advantage-TASA Open Standard) Readability Formula for Books, the new…

Reveals that the Rauding Scale of Prose Difficulty provides results closer to Spache and Dale-Chall values than does the Singer Eyeball Estimate of Readability (SEER) technique. (FL)

Argues against the implicit use of readability formulas as guides to writing graded texts and urges experimental research to define the real factors constituting readability. (AEA)

This article describes readability assessment methods used in science education, summarizes reported readability estimates of science textbooks, and recommends strategies for reducing the readability load of such materials. (JMF)

Uses two formulas developed for Spanish language text to analyze 9 stories that were read by 36 Spanish-speaking second graders with limited English proficiency. Finds that the Spanish readability formulas only weakly predicted student performance, indicating the need to pursue broader, qualitative indices of difficulty for Spanish text. (SG)