About Quantile Sequencing Service

The Quantile® Sequencing Service provides content developers and digital learning companies research-driven information that can aid in directing users to appropriate resources in the developer’s content in order to learn a particular skill or concept. The Quantile Sequencing Service was developed using the Quantile Framework for Mathematics and its key components.

The Quantile Framework is a unique measurement system that uses a scientifically validated developmental scale to measure both students’ readiness to learn a math skill or concept and the demand of mathematical skills and concepts using a common metric – the Quantile® measure. The Quantile scale can be interpreted like a thermometer. The higher the Quantile measure:
  • The more mathematical demand required for the skill or concept (materials).
  • The more ready a student is to learn a higher-order skill or concept.

A Quantile measure represents a student’s ability to reason mathematically, monitors a student’s readiness for mathematics instruction, and locates a student on its taxonomy of mathematical skills, concepts and applications. The Quantile measure is also used to measure the materials used in instruction, to calibrate the assessments used to monitor instruction, and to interpret the results that are derived from the assessments. The result is an anchor to which resources, concepts, skills and assessments can be connected.

The building blocks of the Quantile Framework for Mathematics are Quantile Skills and Concepts (QSCs). QSCs represent specific mathematical skills and concepts that span the mathematics curriculum from Kindergarten through Calculus and Statistics. They are arranged in an orderly progression to create a taxonomy. Examples of QSCs include:
  • Know and use addition and subtraction facts to 10 and understand the meaning of equality. (EM150Q)
  • Use addition and subtraction to find unknown measures of non-overlapping angles. (480Q)
  • Determine the effects of changes in slope and/or intercepts on graphs and equations of lines. (1050Q)

Calibration is the first step toward sequencing a partner’s math content. Calibrating the content, or assigning it a Quantile measure, follows an evaluation process validated by our team of Subject Matter Experts. First, the content is analyzed using the Quantile Analyzer Research Tool (QART), which returns QSCs matched to the partner’s math content according to each QSC’s content standards. Next, the alignment is independently reviewed and reconciled by at least one Subject Matter Expert to ensure an exact match of the skills and concepts in the partner’s math content.

Once math content has been calibrated, it can be organized into predetermined sequences. Subject matter experts organized the Quantile Skills and Concepts (QSCs) into sequences of skills and concepts ordering from most mathematically demanding to least mathematically demanding. To create these sequences, the Knowledge Cluster organization of the QSCs was leveraged to develop a chain or sequence of the prerequisite skills that support the learning of the most mathematically demanding QSC in each sequence.

The organization of skills within each sequence is based on the Quantile® measure. QSCs with the greatest Quantile measures are located at the top of a sequence, and the QSCs within the sequence decrease in Quantile measure to the least mathematically demanding QSC.