Lexile and Quantile data coming our way

Kentucky parents, teachers, and students will soon receive new and helpful insight into students' reading and math skills.  According to the Department of Education press release, the new data will feature:

• Lexile measures for students' reading levels, which can be matched to Lexile measures of the difficulty of different texts, allowing both home and school reading activities focused on books that keep a child moving from current skill to the next level.

• Quantile measures for math skills that use "a scientific approach to measurement that locates a student’s ability to think mathematically and solve problems in an orderly classification of math skills, concepts and applications." Like the Lexile information, the Quantile data will make it easier to provide tasks that keep each student moving upward in math work.

Lexile measurements will also help with our push toward college and career readiness.  One of the key ideas behind the Common Core Standards is that high school reading assignments, even in grade 12, have used much easier texts than students will face in college and in skilled jobs.  MetaMetrics  has revised its recommended reading range for each grade to ensure that students finish high school prepared for the real demand they'll face later on:

Having Lexile data available for each child will make it much easier to check progress against these goals and plan follow-up steps.  (MetaMetrics is the company that provides Lexile data, and the chart above is from Appendix A to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Thanks to Robyn Oatley of ReadyKentucky for alerting me to the chart.)