How to read it
Height is grade. Kindergarten sits at the bottom, grade 12 at the top. Color is the strand, the family of skills a dot belongs to: fractions, reading for meaning, forces and motion, and so on. Click a strand in the legend to see only that one.
Bigger dots matter more. A dot's size shows how many later skills depend on it. The big ones are the load-bearing walls of a child's education: place value, reading for meaning, equivalent fractions.
Tap a dot to open its card: what the skill is in plain words, a couple of examples, and the question we would ask a child to check it. The card also lists what the skill builds on and what it unlocks, so you can walk up or down the staircase one step at a time.
Try a quiz. Every math skill on the map carries a five-question practice quiz. Open a math dot and press Practice. It takes about two minutes.
Why we built it
Most families see school one grade at a time. Teachers see one subject at a time. Nobody sees the whole staircase at once, and that is where children get stuck. A fifth grader who struggles with fractions is very often carrying a gap from grade 3 that never became solid. The report card says "fractions." The real problem is two years earlier.
This map is how we place a new student at Beyond Young. Instead of guessing from a grade level, we find the skills that are secure, the ones that are shaky, and the handful that are ready to learn next. Then we teach from there. The map makes that conversation something a parent can actually see.
What's on the map
| Subject | Skills |
|---|---|
| Math | 609 |
| English language arts | 370 |
| Science | 671 |
| Social studies | 203 |
| Learning to learn | 18 |
| Total | 1,871 |
Between them run 3,518 prerequisite links, including the ones that cross subjects, like the math a science skill quietly depends on. The math skills each carry a verified five-question quiz, 3,045 questions in all. The other subjects are the map only, for now.
Where it comes from
The map has two layers. Kindergarten through grade 8 (1,444 skills) is the open Marble Skill Taxonomy, published on GitHub under open licenses. Its skills are distilled from national frameworks, mainly the Common Core for math and English and the Next Generation Science Standards for science, which New Jersey's own standards are built on. They are not mapped to New Jersey's standard codes one by one. Grades 7 through 12 (427 skills) were written by Beyond Young, and each one is tagged with its New Jersey Student Learning Standards code. Tap one of those dots and the code appears on its card. Tap the small i next to the title on the map to read about the standards themselves. Grades 10 through 12 are a lean core we are still deepening, so treat the top of the map as a guide to direction, not a full curriculum.
Disclaimer. This map is made by Beyond Young Academy. It is not published or endorsed by the New Jersey Department of Education, and it is not an official version of the New Jersey Student Learning Standards. Only the grades 7–12 skills carry a New Jersey standard code, assigned by Beyond Young. The K–8 skills come from Marble's taxonomy and follow the national frameworks New Jersey's standards are based on, without a code-by-code match. It describes what students are expected to learn, not what is on the NJSLA state tests. Use it as a guide for placement and planning, not as a curriculum promise.
Credit: Marble Skill Taxonomy (v1) · © Generative Spark, Inc. (Marble) · withmarble.com · licensed under ODbL 1.0 (database) and CC BY-SA 4.0 (content) · source: github.com/withmarbleapp/os-taxonomy. New Jersey Student Learning Standards © NGA Center & CCSSO. Grades 7–12 extensions and the map © Beyond Young Academy.
Want to know where your child stands? A free placement check takes about twenty questions and comes back as a report on this map.
Book a free placement check →And if you just want to explore, open the map full screen, pick the grade your child is in, and tap the biggest dot you can find.
