Firstly, Secondary
Assignments in the secondary gradebook must be scored out of a certain number of these.
Points
If a gradebook is displaying as Secondary when it should be Standards, you must have forgotten to attach the course to one of these.
Academic Area
I do not want teachers to be able to edit and resave attendance once they have already saved it. How can I prevent this?
Attendance Entity Setup > Entry Restrictions > Only Allow Attendance to be Saved Once per Class Period
These four utilities should be run to "roll over" the secondary gradebooks and get them set up for the new school year.
Clone Category Groups for New Year
Clone Grade Mark Groups for New Year
Clone Special Codes for New Year (optional)
Clone Semester/Final Default Formulas for New Year
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Student has a Health Condition
A teacher MUST attach one of these codes to each assignment, although whether it affects the grade calculation or not depends on the score method.
Category codes
The high/default/low score fields within the grade mark group can all be left as zero if the gradebook calculation type is set to this.
Manually Enter Grades
My teachers cannot uncheck the box to display an assignment/event in Family or Student Access. Why not?
Gradebook > Configuration > Entity Setup > Box is checked to "Force all Assignments/Events to Post to Family/Student Access"
This utility is often the solution when certain academic areas are not printing on the standards report card at the beginning of the year.
Mass Create Gradebook Records
Red triangle on Post Daily Attendance
Attendance comment is entered
These determine how the semester and/or final grade buckets, if used, will calculate.
Semester/Final Default Formulas
If you plan to use either of these grade buckets in the standards gradebook, unfortunately you are out of luck.
Midterm bucket
Exam buckets
I do not want students to be able to get over 100% in any category when calculating their term grade in the secondary gradebook. How can I prevent this?
Secondary Gradebook > Configuration > Grade Calculation District Setup > Limit Weighted Categories to 100% when Calculating Term Grades
This utility won't post grades for dropped students, but it WILL overwrite manually-entered grades if they weren't checked to not allow overwrite by the gradebook.
Posting Utility
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Student has a critical alert
This determines whether the term grades will calculate based on weighted categories or total points. Often teachers get to set this up themselves.
Score Method
The hierarchy, from smallest to largest, of types of grades that may be given in a standards gradebook.
Events
Skill elements
Skills
Subjects
Class grades
When entering comments in the standards gradebook, teachers can enter a freeform comment for the whole class AND a freeform comment for each subject within the academic area. This is too many freeform comments. How can I turn off the subject comments and only allow them to enter the overall class comment?
Standards Gradebook > Configuration > Posting Entity Setup > Do Not Allow Teachers to Post Subject Freeform Comments
This utility is not often run since a scheduled task accomplishes the same thing - updating the data in the Gradebook Tracker.
Run Gradebook Tracker for Teacher/Course
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Student has a parental consent note
You might direct a school to this option if they state they wish to use rubric grading.
Variable Scales
If I want teachers to score at least 3 events before the skill grade will calculate, I'll need to adjust this option within the academic area.
"Graded Events Required to Calculate a Skill Grade"
This option would allow a teacher to weight Homework at 20% for Term 1 but 30% for term 2.
Secondary > Configuration > Grade Calculation Entity Setup > Allow Teachers to weight categories by grading period
Beware that the course master and grade marks table should be cloned BEFORE running this utility, to avoid having to do extra manual work.
Clone Academic Areas for New Year
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Student is assigned to a special grade mark group