A difficulty index was created, which is essentially a multiplier that determines how much harder the post-test questions were versus the pre-test questions. This was taken from the percentage ratio of the top 13 students since these students were sent just for further polishing practice in all of the areas with flashcards instead of being a part of the students in the focused mentoring sessions. The general difficulty index was 1.451, meaning the post-test was approximately 45.1% harder than the pre-test overall. However, there were separate difficulty indexes made for the MDAS portions and the Fraction portions, as upon initial inspection, the difficulty increase between the two portions was not the same, which would affect score analysis for all focus groups except Basics.

The data ended up supporting the initial inspections, as the difficulty index for the MDAS portions was about 1.223, meaning that the MDAS portions of the post-test were approximately 22.3% harder than the equivalent portions of the pre-test. Meanwhile, the difficulty index for the Fractions portions was about 1.622, which meant that the increase in difficulty was much more significant in the Fraction portions than in the MDAS portions.

Taking into account the difficulty indexes to the raw post-test scores of the students in the focused mentoring sessions, all 4 focus mentoring groups demonstrated significant improvement, with an average adjusted percentage improvement of roughly 24.3% across all four groups from the pre-test to the post-test. Note that the percent comparison done between the pre-test and post-test for each group only took into account the student’s scores in the area of focus (MDAS groups only had their scores compared in the MDAS sections of each test, and so on.)