Students can't see my class grade

Br. Michael Fugger

We have had a number of teachers today report that students cannot see the grade in that teacher's class. All of the affected teachers entered grades last week Wednesday or Thursday. By pure luck, we discovered that by changing one student's grade in an affected class, then changing it back to the correct grade and recommitting it seems to have alleviated the problem of the missing grade, and students can once again see the marking period grade in the class. We aren't sure what caused this problem, and I haven't seen any other posts about it, but I have not looked all that hard for any. Whipple Hill Tuesdays, anyone?

Ben Leddy

Hi Br Michael – thank you for reaching out, and I'm sorry for this difficulty at the start of the week. We heard a report of this this morning and believe we have addressed the issue. However, it would be helpful to learn more about what occurred. Feel free to send me an email at ben.leddy@blackbaud.com – thank you!

Megan Day

We've had this issue on and off for the last few weeks. In our case, it's not that students CAN'T see their grade but they see a different cumulative grade than the teacher sees. Like you said, updating a grade in the gradebook seems to resolve the issue. I've worked with Blackbaud Support. The rep will acknowledge that they also see the issue at that time but by the time they dig deeper into it, the teacher has already added or changed a grade somewhere and then the cumulative grades match. Support then asks for another “live” example and if I can't provide one at that time, they close the ticket. I've gone through the process with four different student examples, and I believe with 2 or 3 tickets.

Still haven't gotten a clear answer from support on WHY it happens and how to keep it from happening going forward. It's really unnerving because the only way we know it's happening is when a student approaches a teacher asking why their grade didn't change after an assignment was added and they bring it to me. We have our semester grades finishing up in a couple weeks. Definitely hope it's figured out by then…

Liz King

We are experiencing the same issue.

Megan Day

I spoke too soon. About an hour after I replied here, we also experienced the exact same issue with grades not showing up at all for some students. I submitted another support case and was told the way to resolve the issue is to “simply” go in and change some grades and recommit them… This is not a fix. ?

Ben Leddy

Thanks for sharing this, and my apologies for these challenges at the start of the week. We believe we have addressed the core issue moving forward, but at this moment in time, there may still be instances where cumulative grades for a marking period aren't displaying as expected. If you find this, please reach out to support so we can look into the issue and so support can run a holistic refresh for the impacted marking period for you.

Kathy Hannon

We have been having the same issues as Megan and have reported it to support with the same response - change a grade to resync the gradebook. My teachers cringed at this “fix" - it's not a fix! Students are stressed enough over grades, our semester ends at holiday break and students need to know exactly what their grades are. Like Megan teachers aren't finding out student aren't seeing grades correctly until it is reported to them. Their gradebooks show the correct cummulative grade. Ben it would be nice if you could push for an overall fix, seems to be many of us with the same gradebook problem

Elizabeth Perron

@Kathy Hannon, @Megan Day, @Liz King, @Br Michael Fugger,

As a Community Manager for K-12, thank you for using the Community as a way to investigate if an issue is happening with others, sharing helpful knowledge, respectfully requesting your need. This peer to peer Community is a beautiful place of unity. I used the heart emoji not to say I love that you are having an issue, but to say I love that you are working together and to show I care on a human side the software fix is not an easy emotional one for the students.

Thank you @Ben Leddy, for sharing your product expertise and knowledge of what the next best steps are for our Community members to resolve the issue. As a staff member, you are asked to read what our members are sharing, but not expected to jump into the Community conversations, which makes your responses so valued by me and I hope others.

In harmony and inclusion,

Elizabeth Perron

Blackbaud Community Manager

Ben Leddy

Thank you for your note, Elizabeth, and for your outreach, all. I can assure you we're working hard right now to address these issues and I hope to share further updates soon. In the meantime, please reach out to support so we can look into the issue and so support can run a holistic refresh for the impacted marking period for you.

Susan Ott

Elizabeth Perron:

@Kathy Hannon, @Megan Day, @Liz King, @Br Michael Fugger,

As a Community Manager for K-12, thank you for using the Community as a way to investigate if an issue is happening with others, sharing helpful knowledge, respectfully requesting your need. This peer to peer Community is a beautiful place of unity. I used the heart emoji not to say I love that you are having an issue, but to say I love that you are working together and to show I care on a human side the software fix is not an easy emotional one for the students.

Thank you @Ben Leddy, for sharing your product expertise and knowledge of what the next best steps are for our Community members to resolve the issue. As a staff member, you are asked to read what our members are sharing, but not expected to jump into the Communityconversations, which makes your responses so valued by me and I hope others.

In harmony and inclusion,

Elizabeth Perron

Blackbaud Community Manager

I wasn't aware staff members weren't expected to respond to community posts. This is what I love most about @Ben Leddy. His frequent responses keep us users in the know which for me, helps lessen the frustration with issues that seem to drag on. We're stuck in the middle between teachers and their extreme frustration and dissatisfaction when something goes awry and Blackbaud support giving work arounds that shouldn't be considered fixes (or in one case, throwing it back on me to figure out). Ben's transparency and attentiveness is incredibly appreciated. I have many times passed on his comments to our teachers in an effort to show how responsive Blackbaud can be. I really wish all areas of the product had managers this responsive.

Kathy Hannon

Well said @Susan Ott - I too have used Ben's comments to settle teachers frustrations. Ben is awesome keeping his fans/users up-to-date

Br. Michael Fugger

As I read responses from people, I'm starting to wonder are we seeing two different issues, or two related issues as far as the grade display for the students. I am seeing people recount how no student grade appears, and other students who see an incorrect grade displayed. The solution seems to be the same for each problem: Change a grade in the class and resubmit it to update the displayed grade for the students. Moving forward to the end of the marking period/ semester, I have to start to worry about what grade or grades will be used in the final semester grade calculations in the formula we have set up for the semester grade: the right grade from the teacher's gradebook, or some other grade obtained from someplace else? With fear and trepidation, I wait as I can't imagine the time and effort that might be needed to check student grades.

Ben Leddy

Hi all - just confirming we're continuing to keep our attention this as our top priority. In terms of questions around upcoming grading periods, we believe we've addressed the main issue moving forward, as well as prior occurrences where there were numeric discrepancies between gradebook and the progress page. Right now, we're working on identifying which schools may have been impacted by the display issue so we can work towards final resolution. In the meantime, support does have the capacity to run a refresh for an entire marking period's grades, so if you do notice grades not displaying on a student's progress page, please reach out to support for assistance. Thank you all so much for your input and your patience as we work to wrap this up.

Susan Ott

@Ben Leddy I'm on the phone with support and am being told I have to have my teachers do the work around to fix it. That there's not a refresh that can be run.

Megan Day

I also echo that @Ben Leddy has been fabulous!

@Susan Ott It might be worth sending this community discussion link to your support rep? That's what I did. I've submitted 5 cases now about these issues and it wasn't until after I sent the link to this discussion that the rep let me know they could do a data “refresh” with my permission. I just gave permission so hopefully this resolves the issues once and for all, for us.

Susan Ott

@Megan Day I wish I had seen this post 2 minutes earlier. Just got off the phone with support and was told they can't do a refresh. Told me the work around that we've known about for a month or more and we have to do it ourselves. Why don't all support members get the same information?

Brian Gray

@Ben Leddy - If you haven't already seen it, take a look at case 018629416. I reported a different problem that may be related. Support recommended the same fix - recommit a grade in the gradebook.

Ben Leddy

Thanks @Brian Gray – getting eyes on it.

Liz King

I just spoke to support per @Ben Leddy 's recommendation. They were able to run refresh and everything looks good so far. Thanks, Ben!!!

Ben Leddy

Glad to hear, Liz King‍ ! Thank you again for your patience as we worked to address this.

Chris Felinski

Thanks Ben! Our school is having the same issue as some of the others. It is an easy fix to do a change of grade then change it back, but we don't know how widespread this is with the grades not showing up correctly.

Br. Michael Fugger

Ben, this situation seems to have gone to a worse situation. We are now getting reports of missing first quarter grades. My classes are one of the affected with this problem, and I have not touched any first quarter grades in weeks. The grade is in my gradebook, but when the student looks at his first quarter grades, there is nothing there but – and no grade percentage. We checked about six random students, and to make the situation more perplexing, we are only finding missing grades in English classes, but we have not undertaken a thorough examination of dozens of grades to check other classes that may be affected. The solution to fix the missing grade is as before: Change a grade, commit, then change it back. I am very hesitant to ask for a total recalculation of all our teachers' gradebooks because I know teachers made manual adjustments to grades at the end of the quarter to round a grade or boost a score, and all I need is for report card grades not to agree with what was there earlier. As we get close to the end of our semester, this is causing me a great deal of consternation. Students need access to their grades, and I feel it is a little too much to ask our teachers go to and do the change-commit-change routine for each of their classes.

Ben Leddy

Br Michael, thank you for reaching out. I'm having trouble tagging you via the community functionality. I'd like to connect to better understand what you're still seeing, as we recently undertook steps to address this. Please email me at ben.leddy@blackbaud.com, and thank you.