Help with grade plan grades and report card setup

Brian LeBlanc

Hello friends,

My OCD tendencies are striking again and I need your help. We have a standard academic calendar: four quarters, two semesters, normal-looking report card. All of our K-5 classes use the year term, and all 6-12 classes use a semester-based term (for semester electives, one semester, and for year-long courses, two semesters). K-5 is fine; the issue is coming in 6-12.

The grade plans we use for 6-12 are:

• 1st Quarter report card (contains Q1 grade)
• Semester 1 report card (contains Q2 grade and 1st semester grade, which for semester electives is the final grade for the course)
• 3rd Quarter report card (contains Q3 grade)
• Year End report card (contains Q4 grade, 2nd semester grade and final course grade)

Here's my question. I want all final course grades to appear in the final column of the report card, regardless of when they ended. This is straightforward enough for courses that last all year and for second-semester only electives, because I just need to include that grade plan grade when building the report card. But for first-semester only electives, is there a way to do that? They don't contain the year end report card grade plan, because they don't run through the end of the year.

My workaround right now is to put a note below the grades saying that the Semester 1 grade is the final grade for a first-semester only elective, but I don't love that solution. Any ideas?

Scott Chrysler

@Brian LeBlanc - To make this happen, the final grade for courses all must have the same name and occur in a grade plan with the same name. I just implemented the following fix for that at our school:

1. In Semester 1 grade plan, add a Final Grade for Course grade option
   1. This will be for courses that end in Semester 1
   2. This is not a required grade
   3. We set the grade formula to equal Report Card Grade for the Semester 1 Grade for courses that end in Semester 1
   4. We have two Semester 1 Grade labels in this grade plan
      1. 1 is tagged with a T for year-long courses
      2. 1 is tagged with F for the semester-long courses
         1. I tried only having one Semester 1 Grade entry, but we needed to preserve the T designation on year-long courses for an accurate mid-year GPA.
   5. Teachers who have courses that end at the conclusion of Semester 1 need to calculate the (F) Semester 1 Grade AND the Final Grade for Course
2. Rename Semester 1 grade plan, End of Semester
3. In Year End grade plan, rename the final grade issued for the course Final Grade for Course
4. Rename your Year End grade plan, End of Semester
5. Modify your report cards and transcripts to pull Final Grade for Course from both End of Semester grade plans
6. Check all of your GPA calculations to be sure they are pulling the appropriate grades for calculations.

This was the easiest way to accomplish the desired goal without completely rebuilding grade plans. The bugaboo with this setup is that all teachers, whether their course ended or not, see the Final Grade for Course in the grade plan that was named Semester 1. I was concerned this would cause issues for teachers, but with good direction, they managed pretty well. Only one teacher incorrectly added the Final Grade for Course. A handful of teachers whose courses ended in Semester 1 did not calculate the Final Grade for Course, but that was easy to fix before report cards were published.

This is not the prettiest solution, but it is a functional workaround. At my previous school, I rebuilt the grade plans (and all of the courses associated with them) to accomplish this. It was a cleaner fix, but it took a significant amount of time.

Happy to chat about this more if you have questions.

Scott

Scott Chrysler

@Scott Chrysler - I apologize. For some reason, my bullet points changed to numbers when I posted.