MetaMetrics and EvoText Announce Partnership to Help Teachers Build Lessons Using Appropriate Text Complexity


DURHAM, NC--(Marketwired - Jan 22, 2015) -  MetaMetrics®, developer of the widely adopted Lexile® Framework for Reading, and EvoText, LLC, a provider of custom eLearning solutions for schools and educational publishers, announced today that they have partnered to incorporate MetaMetrics' Lexile® Analyzer technology into Ogment™. Ogment, an EvoText product that is being previewed at FETC 2015, is a cloud-based K-12 lesson creation tool for teachers.

With Ogment, teachers can clip articles, videos and other relevant content from websites and then use that content to build interactive lessons. "Teachers are already using the web to turn everyday content into educational material--Ogment just facilitates that process," said Johanna Wetmore, CEO of EvoText and cofounder of Ogment. With the click of a button, a teacher can bring an article or any piece of text from a website into Ogment, and the Lexile Analyzer will instantaneously provide an approximate Lexile measure for that text. 

"We are very excited to be working with MetaMetrics to bring this technology into Ogment. Teachers from all subjects, not just ELA and Reading, are increasingly being made responsible for covering literacy standards in their curriculum. It's extremely helpful for teachers to have instant access to a reading passage's Lexile level right at point of use," said Wetmore. "With this powerful tool, teachers can now make more informed decisions about which materials they use in their classrooms," she continued.

The Lexile Analyzer evaluates the complexity of the text by breaking down the entire piece and studying its characteristics, such as sentence length and word frequency, which represent the syntactic and semantic challenges that the text presents to a reader. The outcome is the text complexity, expressed as a Lexile® measure, along with information on the word count, mean sentence length and mean log frequency. Most text receives a Lexile measure between 200L to 1700L, although the Lexile scale extends below 0L for beginning reader texts to above 2000L for advanced texts.

"We are delighted to partner with an innovator like EvoText," stated Malbert Smith, Ph.D., President and cofounder of MetaMetrics. "A lesson creation tool like Ogment and its ability to generate relevant, engaging and ability appropriate content will be a tremendous asset to teachers everywhere. We are excited that the Lexile technology will be included in Ogment and be part of the equation to deliver students more personalized instruction that will help them grow in their abilities and thrive in life."

About MetaMetrics
MetaMetrics is focused on improving education for learners of all ages and ability levels. The organization develops scientific measures of academic achievement and complementary technologies that link assessment results with real-world instruction. MetaMetrics' products and services for reading (The Lexile® Framework for Reading, El Sistema Lexile® para Leer), mathematics (The Quantile® Framework for Mathematics) and writing (The Lexile® Framework for Writing) provide unique insights about academic ability and the potential for growth, enabling individuals to achieve their goals at every stage of development. Connect with the organization at: http://blog.lexile.com.

About EvoText
EvoText is an educational software development house that develops custom eLearning solutions. EvoText's team of experienced "eduneers"--educators, engineers and designers--have been at the forefront of educational technology for the past two decades. EvoText's experts have developed several of the most well-known, award-winning eLearning products for basal and supplemental publishers, schools and teachers. EvoText is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. Ogment is a wholly owned subsidiary of EvoText. To learn more, visit EvoText.com and GetOgment.com.

Contact Information:

Elizabeth Lattanzio
919-354-3482
elattanzio@lexile.com