Graphing Made Easy for the School Psychologist! Amy Barrette Lindsay King NASP 2009

Why graph? Graphing CBM scores helps teachers plan more effective programs Helps teachers to determine whether and when instructional adjustments are necessary Fuchs, Deno, & Mirkin, 1984 –New York City Public Schools –Teachers used CBM progress monitoring to develop reading programs with an experimental group while a control group was not monitored –The students in the experimental group outperformed the control on fluency, decoding, and comprehension measures

Creating slopes Use slopes in order to set realistic and ambitions goals for the student Fuchs, Fuchs, & Hamlett, 1989a –Looked at the use of CBM in mathematics –Three different groups: No CBM, CBM without a goal raising rule, and CBM with a goal raising rule –Study found that using CBM to monitor instruction significantly improved student achievement in math, especially when the goal was raised after being met

Altering Programming and Interventions CBM monitoring can be used to make changes to a student’s instructional program when his progress is not meeting his expected goals Fuchs, Fuchs, and Hamlett 1989b –This study found that practitioners should not only monitor student results, but should utilize results collected in order to build student-specific instructional strategies, especially with students who are not responding to traditional instruction

Our Survey Online survey of 100 New York State School Psychologists

Who uses graphing? 10 item survey sent via to members of NYASP 100 respondents- 99% completed the survey

Demographics - 39% of respondents had been working in the field 10 or more years, 20% 7-10 years 10 % 3-5 years, 31% 0-2 years - 77% work at the elementary level, 50% middle school, 44% high school % from Suburban districts, 36.4% Rural, 13.1% Urban, 4% other % Western NY, 22.7% Central, 9.3% Northern, 9.3% Southern, 19.6% Eastern, 16.5% Downstate

To what extent does your district implement RTI, BIPs, or ISTs? (1) No implementation- 2% (2) -18.2% (3) Some information is collected-45.5% (4) 25.3% (5) Full implementation- 9.1%

To what extent do you collect student monitoring data of academic or behavioral progress? (1) No data- 7.1% (2)- 18.4% (3) Collect some data- 42.9% (4)-19.4% (5) Data is collected on every student-12.2%

To what extent do you graph the student progress data that you collect? (1) Not at all- 26.6% (2)- 20.4% (3) Some information is graphed- 34.7% (4)- 6.1% (5) All data collected is graphed- 10.2%

Barriers to graphing student progress data (in order): TimeTraining Easy computer resources to make graphs Access to Computer

If educator friendly graphing tools were available online… How useful would these be to you? –55% said very useful, 95% said at least somewhat useful How likely would you be to use them? –48% would be very likely, 94% said they would be at least somewhat likely

Graphing Made Easy! Step by Step Directions to Make Your Own Graph

Step 1: Data Entry Enter dates in column A, starting with row 2, and put “date” as the heading in row 1 Highlight all of your dates, right click and choose “format cells” –Choose date (03/14/2001) List all of your students across each column in row 1 Enter data for each child as appropriate

Step 2: Making the Graph Highlight all data, including the headings Choose “Insert” along the top of the screen –Choose “Chart” You can also click on the graph icon along the top of the page

Step 2: Making the Graph Chart Wizard will come up –Step 1: Select line graph as chart type –Step 2: If you only want to graph one student’s progress click on “series” and remove the other students’ names –Step 3: “Titles” tab- label the graph and axes, “Axes” tab- choose time scale –Step 4: Open chart as new sheet

Step 3: Calculating the Slope Click on the line, then go to the chart drop box and select “add trendline” (you can also right click and select “add trendline”) Go to options and select “display equation” An equation like this will appear on the graph: y=0.8399x + 34 The number before the x is your slope, so you can delete the rest of the info This number is the slope PER DAY, if you want a WEEKLY slope you must multiply this number by 7

Step 4: Personalizing Your Graph Right click on the graph and choose “chart options”. This will allow you to change all of the labels on your graph (ie. Title, axis, legend, etc) and to change the look of your graph (ie., gridlines) –If you right click on the graph and select “clear” this will get rid of the background making the graph easier to read. If you double click on this line, this will allow you to change the look of the line and the data points –Double clicking on any word on your graph allows you to change it –Using the drawing toolbar allows you to add lines, shapes, arrows, etc to your graph

Now You Are a Graphing Expert!

References Fuchs, L.S., Deno, S.L., & Mirkin, P.K. (l984). The effects of frequent curriculum-based measurement and evaluation on student achievement, pedagogy, and student awareness of learning. American Educational Research Journal, 21, Fuchs, L.S., Fuchs, D., & Hamlett, C.L. (l989a). Effects of alternative goal structures within curriculum-based measurement. Exceptional Children, 55, Fuchs, L.S., Fuchs, D., & Hamlett, C.L. (l989b). Effects of instrumental use of curriculum-based measurement to enhance instructional programs. Remedial and Special Education, 10(2), Fuchs, L.S. and Fuchs, D. (2003). What is scientifically-based research on progress monitoring? National Center on Student Progress Monitoring: Washington DC. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from Reading Rockets Web site: