Measuring Text Readability Using Reading Level

Background

In mid-nineteenth century America schoolrooms were generally not divided into grade levels. Over time grade levels were added and methods were developed to measure the grade level of texts. As the need for graded material grew, there was an extensive push for more scientific methods to measure the grade level of specific texts used in the classroom. The result was the first readability formulas coming in to use in the 1920s. (Wolf, 2013) Much of the early work on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula was done by Rudolf Flesch in the 1940s (Flesch, 1979). Flesch had been conducting reading studies, observing readers and how they approach long words, and examining punctuation and sentence length. He was an active proponent of “plain English” and was known though many books, in particular Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do About It (1955). He was a critic of the “look-say” method of teaching reading popular in the 1950s, and he advocated a method for teaching reading that became known as the “look and guess” method and started a revival of phonics which taught learners to sound out words using rules (Blumenfeld, 2015). The Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test and Reading Ease Test came about from the initial work of Rudolf Flesch and subsequent refinements by J. Peter Kincaid. These changes were added by Kincaid while performing work for the United States Navy. Noting that the Flesch-Kincaid grade level was developed for adults, J. Peter Kincaid pointed out:

In a 1987 interview J. Peter Kincaid stated: