Giving a staff member access to all grades

Nathan Ong
Nathan Ong
Third Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions

Hi,

Is it possible to give a staff member (counselor, coach etc) access to all student grades? They don't necessarily need access to teachers' gradebooks, but be able to view grades and monitor at-risk students.

For now the only thing that comes to mind is making them a grading (platform?) manager and impersonating teachers.

Thanks!

-edit--seems the best way at the moment is make them a grading manager to be able to view grades under Grading > Gradebooks > Gradebook list, leaving this here for reference.

Comments

  • Kathy Hannon
    Kathy Hannon
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    @Nathan Ong we created Activity groups for our Academic coaches - similar to what you are trying to do. They have access to view the students' progress and assignments (a couple of academic coaches have all 9-12 grade students). We created a Role using the Advisor Role (we can choose this in the employee set up) and edited the tasks to be a bit less than an Advisor. Then you have to give access to the “Grade access - All School Advisors” in the Gradebook settings in Academics. Happy to give more details if you want to send me a message.

  • Scott Chrysler
    Scott Chrysler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    @Nathan Ong - If you want to give these people access to just report card grades and comments, you may give them access via the individual report cards. Coaches are not specified as User you can give rights yo directly, but they may fall under the nebulous “Everyone else” group. I have never received a definitive explanation of exactly who is in the group.

    If you want to give these people access to assignment level grades and current averages in individual courses, it is possible to grant them access to a grade book: Academics > Grading setup > Gradebook settings > set the filters as needed for school and year > click the … button > Edit marking period > select those groups you want to give grade access to: Advisors, All School Advisors, Dorm Supervisor, Parent, Student, and Coaches are your options.

    As none of those grade book access options really did exactly what we wanted them to do, we created hidden advisories and populated them with the cohort we wanted that “advisor” to be able to view. So for example, the Director of our academic support system wanted to be able to follow the progress of every student enrolled in that program. A “hidden” advisory was created with the director being the advisor and every student enrolled in the program as an advisee. It is a bit of extra work but achieves the goal very well. The director especially like the ease with which she can access this information in just a few clicks.

    To create a hidden advisory, we build out the advisory, then go to Core > Security > Group Page Access > Advisories > Individual Advisories > set the filters as needed > remove as many permissions as possible except for the Roster for the Advisor of the Advisory.

    Hope that helps.

    Scott

  • Nathan Ong
    Nathan Ong
    Third Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    Thank you for your responses @Scott Chrysler and @Kathy Hannon! Those are great suggestions.

    I'll play around and see. Thanks!

  • Toni Moore
    Toni Moore
    Seventh Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Nathan Ong
    We created a HS Admin All Advisory Group for our Principal and Assistant Principals. Then enrolled all of the students in the group. The Principal/AP can access the group, search for the student and go directly to progress tab. This enables them to see current grades as displayed in the grade books. Hope this helps.

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