EduTech's PowerSchool Success Blog

Giving Grades To Dropped Students.

Joshua Ternes — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:08:39 +0000

From time to time a student will drop out of a class and enroll in another. This happens often at semester time. If that student is dropped before grades are stored how do you enter their exams and get the grade to show on a report card?

Answer:

The students that are dropped will still show in the teacher’s grade book under the dropped student group. To see those students the teacher has to select the dropped group and choose “filter selection” from the drop down menu. The dropped group is located beneath the active group on the left side of the grade book in the middle box. Once they have that group selected they can enter the grades for each assignment in the grade book including exams.

Important:

From the admin side when storing grades you have to be sure to use dates that are in the range of the dropped student’s enrollment into that class
Also for the admin, when running the report cards you will want to choose the third bullet to include enrollments as of a date that the students were in the class.

End of Term Reminder

Janet O'Hara — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:13:39 +0000

It’s the end of the semester, and it’s a good idea to remind the teachers that give final exams to watch those due dates!

Typically we cut our Quarter 2 term short a view days to create a separate term for our final exams called E1 (or something like that). Here’s an example:

Q1 = 8/15/2009 to 10/25/2009
Q2 = 10/26/2009 to 1/13/2010
E1 = 1/14/2010 to 1/17/2010
S1 = 8/3/2009 to 1/17/2010

Any regular classroom assignments need to have a due date in the gradebook of 1/13/2010 or before to calculate in the Quarter 2 term. Any final exam given should have a due date between 1/14/2010 and 1/17/2010. There should be no other assignments in this term so this final exam can be counted as a percentage of the overall final grade!

Students Not Showing on Class Lists

Melissa Bitz — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:06:06 +0000

Semester 2 is right around the corner. Our helpdesk has had several calls lately in regards to students not showing up in classes. This may be due to the term length of a class being changed after students are enrolled. For example at the beginning of the year a Life Skills class was set up as a S1 only class and had students enrolled. The school then realized the class was supposed to be a S2 only class or decided to change it to an S2 only class so the section was changed from an S1 to an S2. This will change the term length of the course BUT it will not correct the start/end dates for the student’s enrollment that you see on the student’s all enrollments screen. The start and end dates for students enrolled into a class is stored in the CC table so if you change the length of the class this change is only affection the section and not the enrollments. The change needs to be made on the student’s all enrollments screen or can be mass changed in DDA in the CC table.

Splitting a class

Joshua Ternes — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:11:05 +0000

To get things ready for when you split a class at semester you will have to create a second section for students enrolled in the original class if none already exist.

So from the school you will click on school on the left
Then click on sections at the bottom of the screen
Then choose a section like AM1
you will notice that on this screen you have just one section.
then click on the number 1 under the sect# heading and print that screen as a reference

After that go back to that section (ie. AM1) screen and click the New button at the top.
Enter all of the fields the same as your printed copy except the section # will be 2 and the teacher will be different.

You will do the same for the remainder of your sections.
Those will be the sections that you enroll your students in.

Enjoy!

A PowerSchool Resolution for 2010: Clean Enrollment Records!

Janet O'Hara — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:57:46 +0000

A sure fire way to evaluate your school’s enrollment records is to run the Section Enrollment Audit in PowerSchool. Students will show up on the report 1) if they are enrolled in school, but no classes or 2) if they have enrollments that are overlapping.

To run the report:

1) From the start page, click on reports

2) Scroll down and click on Section Enrollment Audit

3) Cross your fingers and hope it says the following: ”No students identified”

4) If students are listed – there is some clean up that needs to be done!

Here’s an example:

Doe, John Student Number: 9999999 Grade: 12 E: 10/29/2009 L: 6/5/2010 (School Enrollment)

Study Hall E: 10/28/2009 L: 1/19/2010 (Class Enrollment)
English III E: 10/28/2009 L: 1/19/2010 (Class Enrollment)
World History E: 10/28/2009 L: 1/19/2010 (Class Enrollment)
US Government E: 10/28/2009 L: 1/19/2010 (Class Enrollment)
Advanced Art E: 10/28/2009 L: 6/5/2010 (Class Enrollment)

Look at John Doe’s School Enrollment Date in red, then look at the John’s Class Enrollment Dates in green. How can a student be enrolled in classes prior to his entry date into school?

Where do we fix these?

1) Find the student in question.

2) Click on the “All Enrollments” Screen for that student and edit the class enrollment date for the student so they don’t overlap.

3) Another option is to modify the student’s Entry Date on the Transfer Info Screen. If choosing this option, proceed with caution and make sure you are entering your dates accurately to ensure the students membership days are correct!

Have you tried running the Grade Distribution Report?

Janet O'Hara — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:50:58 +0000

There are some many features in PowerSchool that often don’t get utilized, and I think this report is one of them. Many schools are looking for data regarding student performance and this report is great! The Grades Distribution report identifies trends in instruction, grading and assessment. The report helps determine the validity and consistency of grading practices within the school. To run the report:

1) On the start page, choose Reports from the main menu.
2) Scroll down the screen and click Grades Distribution.
3) Determine when you want the report printed in the processing pulldown menu.
4) In the data to be filled section, choose how you want the report sorted by – Course is the default.
5) Set grades to scan as either Historical or Current Grades.
6) Set the Distribute Grades by either letter grade or percent (I recommend letter grade)
7) Set the Distribution Display – A,B,C,D,F,I
8 ) Show distribution cut-offs if you selected to display by percent, if not leave blank.
9) Indicate which grades are passing which are failing.
10) Set a term
11) Enter the store codes
12) Click submit.

Cool Report – Give it a try!

Timeout in the Gradebook

Melissa Bitz — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:27:01 +0000

With this new version of PS comes PowerTeacher. By default the timeout for the web gradebook is set at 10 minutes. This is a setting you may change in PT administrator. First log into the admin side and click on staff and find your admin account. Click on security settings and mark yes next to PowerTeacher Administrator user?. Then go to the start page and click on PT Administrator…when logged in click on gradebook. There is a timeout setting here.

Searching the DDE for Incomplete Grades

Janet O'Hara — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:37:26 +0000

Many schools manually override the final term grade to an Incomplete to benefit a student, but often forget to go back and make revisions prior to the next term. To search for incompletes:

1) From the start page, click on system under setup
2) Click on Direct Database Export (DDE)
3) Set the current table to Stored Grades(31)
4) Search the stored grades table:
   Grade = I
   Term ID >= 1900
5) Check to search only records that belong to your school
6) Click Search ALL records in the table
7) If Current Records in Selection: __ has a number greater than 0 – you still have incompletes lingering out there for students.
8 ) Click on the “Export Records” link and pull the following fields:
   [1]lastfirst
   Course_Name
   Course_Number
   Grade Teacher_Name

9 ) Incomplete grades need to be collected from the teachers and manually changed on the Historical Grades page for your students! Look closely at GPA points, earned credit, and whether or not it has been included or exclude in the students GPA, Class Rank, and Honor Roll.

Using Activities to Work With Student Data

Joshua Ternes — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:40:59 +0000

Assigning students to activities in PowerSchool can help save time when marking the basketball team as absent when traveling, or sending letters home for the chess team.

Activities Setup

Create, modify, or delete the activities available to students in PowerSchool. You can also clear the values of the activities field for all students, such as at the end of each school year.

How to Add an Activity
Create an activity so that you and other users can add it to student records as needed.

Indicate if the new activity affects all schools on your system or just your school. After adding an activity, you can add it to student records.

1. On the start page, choose School from the main menu. The School Setup page
2. Under General, click Activities Setup. The Activities Setup page appears.
3. Click New. The Edit Activity page appears.
4. Use the following table to enter information in the fields:
5. Click Submit. The Activities Setup page displays the new activity.

FIELD DESCRIPTIONS:

Activity Name	Enter the name of the activity.
Student Field Name	Remember that spelling is important and that you must use underscores (_) rather than spaces between words.
Activity Type	Choose on of the following types of activity from the pop-up menu: Academic, Athletic, Community, or Music.
Required	Select the checkbox if students are required to participate in this activity.
This Activity Appears For:	Select an option to display this activity for only the selected school or all schools on this server.

After the activities are set up you simply go to a student, click activities on the left, and select the activities that the student is involved in.

Once you have all of the students involved in an activity you can easily search for them by typing in the name you gave the field above and = 1 (which signifies a checked box for that student).

Student Search Example:

football=1

Returns all students marked as participating in Football.

Where do I find a student’s FTE value?

Janet O'Hara — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:30:54 +0000

If a student doesn’t have an FTE assigned upon enrollment in school – no attendance will be calculated for the student. This is often brought up when printing report cards, or using the ADA/ADM by student report in PowerSchool

To verify a student’s FTE (Full Time Equivalency):

1) From the start page, search for and select the student

2) On the left student menu – click on the “transfer info” page.

3) Click on the date of the current enrollment to open.

4) Choose an FTE from the pull-down if a value is not already there from the menu and submit to save changes.