What is a Quantile Measure?
The Quantile® Framework for Mathematics helps identify the math concepts your child knows and match your child with the concepts they are ready to learn.
What Your Child’s Quantile Measure Tells You
Children get a Quantile measure from tests they take at school or from a state assessment. It’s a number followed by the letter “Q.” Quantile measures range from below 0Q to above 1400Q and span the skills and concepts taught in kindergarten through high school. For example, your child’s Quantile should be at 1330Q to handle the math needed in college and most careers.
A student Quantile helps you to know:
- Which skills and concepts your child is ready to learn.
- The level of success your child is expected to have with an upcoming skill or concept.
- How your child is growing in mathematics on a single scale across grade levels.
How Quantile Measures Help Student Math Achievement
Quantile measures aren’t just a math score. They are linked to specific math concepts to help you and your child’s teacher discover any gaps and map out what your child is ready to learn next. Maybe they need to review specific concepts before a current classroom unit on quadrilaterals. Or, they might be able to complete enrichment activities to move ahead even more quickly.
Quantile measures help match children to their “optimal” challenge. When they work on materials that they’re ready to learn, they experience more success and less frustration.
Matching Student Quantile Measures to Skills and Concepts
Mathematical skills and concepts build upon one another. All math learners need to progress through a complex web of skills and concepts that fit together. The Quantile Framework for Mathematics has defined almost 500 mathematics skills and/or concepts. Each of these concepts has a measure, and each measure shows how difficult one skill is in relation to the others.
The description of each skill and its Quantile measure is called a Quantile Skill and Concept (QSC). As the difficulty or demand of the skill increases, so does the Quantile measure.
The difference between the Quantile measure of the Quantile Skill and Concept (QSC) and a child’s Quantile measure gauges how difficult that skill or concept may be for a child to learn.
For optimal learning and growth, a child should practice mathematics within a Quantile range of 50Q above and 50Q below his or her Quantile measure.
Using Quantile Measures with Your Child
There’s so much that teachers and parents can do with Quantile measures.