Academic Performance calculations limited to terms

Scott Chrysler

We are revamping our academic performance categories. Double checking everything, I noticed the GPA's listed in the View Academic Performance Version is different than the actual GPA calculation. After a very helpful support call with Haven, she reminded me that K12 is only able to calculate academic performance based on terms. Our school issues grades for the quarter, semester, and then a final grade for the course that is the average of the fall and spring semester grades. I am unable to set up an academic performance that uses the year-end GPA as a variable. Haven offered me a work around, but our academic performance criteria also take into account grades earned (i.e. a student may not earn a grade below a B to be considered for academic recognition), so though it was a useful work around, it would require a significant amount of hands on review. On May 25, 2017, the idea was proposed to add this functionality to the system. It has received 9 votes to date. If this is a functionality that would help your institution, please upvote the idea:

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-1101


If anyone has suggestions on how I might be able to work around this as well, I am all ears.


Scott

Brian Gray

Scott - We use a combination of GPA and grades for Honor Roll: GPA >= 14.5 (on a 16 point scale - a long story) and no grade below G- (and even longer story). (We also have a second rule for Honor Roll that is based on grades only - no minimum GPA.)


Grades > Grading Setup > Calculations. Academic Performance.

Edit the Honor Roll rule

Set the GPA requirement, then click Grades.

Our final grade is part of the Spring term grades, so we edit that section:

Enter the rules (this specific grade greater than or equal to something, etc). You are stating the rules that include a student on the Honor Roll - not the rules to exclude a student.


Navigating your way out of these screens is tricky.

• Save and Exit
• On the left side of the screen, click General Information
• Save and Exit

Your mileage may vary.

Scott Chrysler

Brian -


Thanks for your the guidance. We have very similar academic performance groups as you all. The "grade qualifications" have been set up and work fine. Our issue is that we want to be able to calculate performance on 4th quarter, spring semester, and final grade for the course. These three grades reside in the same grade plan, so only one may be designated as "T". A GPA is calculated for each of these grading columns as well. The system permits me to point to the specific grading column in which we need to examine "grade qualifications", but it does not give us the same flexibility with the GPA calculation. The system will only "look at" the grading column that has the "T" associated with it. Because of that, we are unable to calculate on the other two columns. I imagine a work around would be to go into each grade plan and change the grade that is marked with a "T" for each calculation, but, in all honesty, I am getting very tired of having to find work arounds and creating more work for what I consider some pretty fundamental tasks in K12. This technology is supposed to be making our lives easier and more efficient so we can spend more time focusing on our students. I know no LMS/SIS will be perfect, and we all know that EE had its own quirks, but I will say EE made these types of administrative tasks and data mining much easier.


The other aspect of the academic performance calculations that irks me is that we can no longer use a grade count to determine a performance category which we could in EE. For example, at our school an upper school student is placed on academic probation if the student meets one of three criteria for semester grades: 3 grades of C- or below; 2 grades of D+ or below, or 1 grade of F. The F is simple enough to determine, but the system cannot count the number of C-s a student earns. I have created yet another work around for this, but this method of determining a performance category is not unique to our school and should be something a system of this quality and expense can manage.


Thank you for you guidance as always. I greatly appreciate all of the wisdom and perspective you share with all of us regularly. You are a K12 whisperer.


All the best,

Scott

Jason Whitaker

We have a similar issue in that some of our academic performance measures look at weighted courses such as AP where we offer a weighted GPA. However, we are unable to make a rule like “all As in unweighted courses, or all Bs in weighted courses”. Does anyone have a similar issue or a workaround?