In addition to surveys of required reading in twelfth grade and the first year of college and consultations with experts in text complexity, two leading measurement systems were used to help make the selections below. While other measures of readability and text complexity have value, the two described below helped guide this initial work and confirmed that these four texts are suitable exemplars of the types of complex texts that students need to master to be ready for college and careers. The first system—a methodology described by Jeanne Chall and her coauthors in The Qualitative Assessment.
