Rather than focusing exclusively on literacy skills, the Common Core State Standards set expectations for the complexity of texts students need to be able to read to be ready for college and careers. To choose texts that are on grade level for the CCSS use three steps:

1. Use quantitative measures to assign a text to a grade band.
2. Use qualitative measures to locate a text within a specific grade band.
3. Use professional judgment to decide how suited a text is for a specific instructional purpose with a particular set of students.

This collection includes tools to help with each step and research to support teachers' understanding of text complexity.