Diagnostic assessment of mathematical thinking of students entering secondary school

Abstract

In the educational field, the necessity and importance of standardized evaluations with a diagnostic purpose are widely recognized. Addressing this need, at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) of the State of Durango, Mexico, administered a departmental exam to students entering secondary school to assess, among other disciplines, their level of development in mathematical thinking. The results of this departmental exam were analyzed in the present study to interpret the scores obtained by the participating students and to determine the psychometric properties of the exam in terms of reliability and validity. The latter was assessed through item quality measures, including difficulty and discrimination indices. This quantitative study utilized an ex-post-facto method with a descriptive scope. The sample was deterministic and included 120 newly admitted students from the General Secondary School No. 6, “Mexico.” The findings indicated that only 41.6% equivalent to 50 students passed the exam. On the other hand, the psychometric properties of the departmental exam were found to be highly acceptable, with a reliability statistic (KR-20 = .806) and mean values for the difficulty index (MIdif = .49) and discrimination index (MIdisc = .5).