A proposal for classifying students’ maths performances in lower secondary school

In this work, a combined use of different methods is proposed in order to evaluate mathematics students’ achievement within the Italian lower secondary school. Despite the increasing need for an objective assessment of student performance, a univocal approach still does not exist. By using data from the INVALSI standardized test administered in 2008 to Italian lower secondary school students, a joint approach of test score, latent trait and latent class analysis is proposed which highlights both item features and student differences properly. The methods show an effective capability of differentiating the examinees into three performance groups on the basis of the response patterns.