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     Beth Hadley grew up in Ohio and attended Syracuse University in New York.  She has taught in private and public schools in the Los Angeles area, and joined the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District in 1995.  She has been the Principal at Miraleste Intermediate School since 2009, and is married to an educator. 

     Miraleste is a former high school, and has facilities not usually available in an intermediate school, such as art and computer facilities.  It has 930 students, some of whom have moved into the Palos Verdes area for the good schools and are not as well prepared as PV students.  There is good parental support, which has provided funding for new lockers and other needs to help in times of tight budgets. 

     Mrs Hadley described the new Lexile program at her school.  The Lexile Framework for Reading (by MetaMetrics) measures both reading ability and text difficulty on the same scale, in order to match text difficulty-level to the reader’s current ability, rather than arbitrarily by age or grade level.  The scale ranges from 200 for beginners to 1700 for advanced.  All students in all 3 grades at the school completed this testing 2 months ago. 

     Text difficulty is measured by a formula related to sentence length and word frequency.  The large book database can be searched for titles in the student’s Lexile range in the student’s areas of interest, to provide a list of titles for the student to look for in the library or bookstore.  Teachers can compare the Lexile level of the classroom textbook with the Lexile levels of students in the class, and parents can also use this measure to provide appropriate reading levels for their children at home.  This individualized process of matching reading material to the student’s level provides faster development of good reading skills, avoiding material that is either too simple and boring, or too difficult and frustrating. 

     The Common Core State Standards is a clear set of K-12 standards, adopted by most of the states including California to ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers.  Over the last 50 years, the text complexity of K-12 textbooks has become increasingly easier while the text demands for college and careers have remained constant or even increased.  The resulting gap causes deficiencies at the beginning college level, requiring more remedial courses (a current state budget issue).  Mrs Hadley is excited about the potential of the Lexile Program to enhance educational performance at Miraleste, which is well-positioned for new state standards coming in 2014. 

     Reading skills are taught in all classes, not just in English.  There are also some computer programs for individualized remedial help in math.  The school has an adequate number of textbooks, but they are old now due to budget constraints.  Replacement is planned in the near future.  Among other school activities, the students are developing a musical performance, including both costumes and orchestra.