How to Create and USE a Cut-Off Chart for IStation

I am a huge fan of the computer-based intervention and progress monitoring tool, IStation, or ISIP, or Imagination Station.  It goes by many names but whatever you would like to call it, it is a great product and I am very thrilled that both of the campuses I work at have it available for all of our students.
In case you are not familiar with the program, it is a reading intervention that students can use to improve their reading skills.  The students take assessments and then play reading games based upon their needs identified in the assessment piece. We use it as an intervention and as a progress monitoring tool.  All of our students are required to use it for at least 30 minutes each week but our struggling students use it for 90 minutes each week.  I have personally seen tremendous growth from students utilizing this program and I am a big proponent of what it can do, when used along side an excellent classroom reading program. After all, there is no replacement for a great teacher giving individualized instruction.  However, IStation is the closest thing to it, in my opinion.

If your district doesn't use IStation, check it out!

IStation has some great features, including several excellent reports.  Our teachers utilize these to track progress, send home information to parents, and to set goals with students.  At a campus level, we are able to pull up all the data for a grade-level and look at trends, which students are struggling, specific areas that need growth, etc.  The program really does provide a lot of excellent, useful information.
There is, however, one report that I build for our teachers each month. I call it the "IStation Cut-Off" graph and I think it is extremely useful when it comes to grouping students, looking at how close students were to moving up a tier in IStation, and in identifying outliers in a grade-level. I'm going to explain to you how to set this graph up and what I use it for so that you can build it yourself, not just with IStation data but with any assessment data.
The first thing I do is create an Excel spreadsheet or a spreadsheet in google drive.  Along the left-side column, I fill in the numbers corresponding to the scores the students needed to obtain in order to reach tier 1 and tier 2.  I put the lowest number possible for a tier 1 score as my top number because, at this point, I'm not interested in tracking the students who are scoring in tier 1, the highest tier in the IStation program.  I use the "Instructional Tier Goals" chart provided by IStation in the Toolbox section to determine exactly what the cut-off numbers are for tier 1 and tier 2.  In order to determine what the final number on my graph will be, I look at the lowest scoring student in tier 3 in that grade-level.

Building the Cut-Off Graph

After I have entered the possible scores on the left-side of the graph, I create a green line in the boxes next to the tier 1 cut-off score by filling in those boxes with bright green.  This shows me where the students need to be in order to be considered tier 1.  I also fill in the boxes next to the cut-off number for tier 2 in yellow to show what score students needed to reach in order to qualify as tier 2.  This creates a great visual for determining how close (or how far away) students are from these thresholds.

The colored lines show the cut-off numbers for tier 1 and 2.

Next, I print a copy of the Summary report for the grade-level from the IStation reports section.  I place each student's name on the graph across from the number of points he or she scored that month.  I enter all of the students who are tier 2 or tier 3 for that month.  I only put one student's name per box and sometimes there are several students with the same score so they each go in a different box in the same row but different columns.

Entering the students' names is a great way to see where my groups are and who are the outliers.  Names do not reflect real students.

After all of the students' names are entered, I can easily identify where students are grouped together (which is great for pulling small groups), how close each student is to achieving the next tier, and who my students are that are way off track and hanging out in No-Man's Land as outliers. These are the kiddos I really need information about.
I always share this graph with the entire  grade-level, as well as administration.  I feel that it provides a great visual so that teachers can see just how much farther students need to grow in order to reach the next tier.
What data tools do you like to use and how to you use them to increase student performance?