Glossary: Percentile Rank

Term used to describe student performance on standardized tests relative to a nation-wide norming group. The PR refers to the percentage of the norming group that scored lower on the test (sometimes referred to as national percentile rank - NPR).

Related Topic

Norming group - A large representative group of individuals who complete a test and on whose scores the test is standardized. Performance of students or groups of students is expressed relative to the performance of this norming group. For example, the 40th percentile means students in a school  performed better on the test than 39% of the norming group.