Drop a grade in gradebooks - Question

Christine Condon

Here is a dilemma faced by our Physics teacher. Is there a solution of which I am not aware?

"For my AP Physics class, I always allow students to drop a certain number of homework assignments each semester, and in the grade calculation, you can specify the number of dropped assignments for each category. However, when I was entering homework corrections in the gradebook, I noticed a strange artifact. When I entered a homework correction for a dropped assignment, the student's overall grade actually dropped when I entered the improved homework score. Do you know how Blackbaud chooses which assignment to drop? They obviously don't choose in a way that maximizes the student's grade. If not, I will have to manually exempt homework assignments to make sure the student's grade is always maximized.    The problem is exactly here:  Blackbaud chooses to drop a 4/5 assignment instead of dropping an 8/10 assignment. They both have the same percent score, but dropping the 8/10 helps the student's grade more than dropping the 4/5 assignment does. The reason is because I use a weighted average, and dropping the larger amount of points reduces the overall point total more, which helps the student's grade more. Ironically, if their average was less than 80%, it would be more helpful to drop the 4/5 grade. I guess it is a tricky algorithm."

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Christine Condon you posted this in the bbcon community. I think you meant for it to be in the K-12 community, so I'm going to move it over there. Thanks!

Christine Condon

Thank you!

Beverly Byrd

That is a great question. I am very interested in the answer. I drop grades at the end of the term since the dropped grade can change throughout the terms.

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Christine Condon since it has been a few days with no responses and @Beverly Byrd is also interested in the answer - would you mind opening a Blackbaud support ticket and give them the details of what is happening and see what solution they provide? Once given a solution or answer, would you mind coming back and sharing it here? Thanks!

Geoffrey Goodfellow

The Gradebook does look at the max points for the assignments when a teacher selects to drop lowest grades and it will drop the assignment with the lowest earned point value first.

However, if there are 2 assignments with equally low point values (percentage wise) then it will drop the assignment with the lowest max point value first.  Meaning, if a Teacher selects to drop the two lowest grades and a Student has three 0s, for assignments that are worth 100, 50 and 25 points, respectively, the 0s for the 50 and 25 point assignments will be dropped.

The above paradigm doesn't always fit exactly what every teacher would prefer, but the system does drop in a predictable way. Sometimes, once teachers learn how the system drops assignments, they start to build that dropping methodology into their future classes so that things are managed automatically for them. The other option is for the teacher to acknowledge that the dropping method of the system doesn't match how they wish to drop assignments and that if they wish to drop using their own method, then they will have to accomplish that manually at the end of the academic term.