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The assessment of students' knowledge is a common task in the field of education, either to assess learning or to mediate the selection of candidates in entrance exams. Exams that employ an assessment based on multiple choice questions, in which the student marks items during the exam time and then receives feedback on his grade, do not offer the student significant contributions to understanding his performance. The general objective of this study is to provide, for both students and teachers, formative feedback from the estimation of the ability of students and difficulty of the items, through a statistical technique called Item Response Theory (IRT). This technique produces a model of data on student performance based on the analysis of the responses collected in the exams. An experiment was carried out using data from an exam applied in a public high school in Amazonas. The results obtained indicate that there is a valuable amount of information that allows analyzing the relationship between the various items and Cite as: Monteiro, E. J. L. B., Leitão, G. d. S., & Barreto, R. d. S. (2021). A Method Based on Item Response Theory the estimated abilities. It is possible to classify students on a hability scale so that the student himself can locate his position in a discipline and simulate which topics can be studied to obtain greater hability. From the teacher's point of view, it is possible to analyze which topics were more difficult for the class, as well as to analyze whether an elaborated item is in accordance with the classes taught. Otherwise, the teacher can redo the item or change the difficulty level. The results provided significant information that allows the elaboration of formative feedback capable of providing the examinees and evaluators with the necessary guidelines to investigate difficulties and contribute to a better performance in the teaching-learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]