Blogs

Standard grading has become a popular method of tracking a student's achievement. While often used at the elementary level standards-based grading can be found at any level, configuring standards and entering scores is one part of the process, and reporting them is another. While the most common need is for individual student-based reports, schools often want to look at standards through a bigger window. However, generating this type of report is not a simple process. There aren't many built-in reports that can access the records schools need without complicated searches and exporting processes. But with the use of our Standards Grade Analysis Report, accessing standards grades has just gotten easier.

Student credit progress is one area that counselors and principals must constantly monitor. While reviewing data for individual students is fairly simple, it still involves either reviewing student records by a student’s historical grade screen, printing transcripts, or searching for and exporting the data out of the stored grades table. In any case, it often still involves manual manipulation of data just to get to the totals for students. Even then, finding out as a group which students are and are not on track can be a difficult and time-consuming process. However, with the use of our Credit Progress Report, that data is just a few clicks away.

Have you ever been asked for a list of students that are new to the school district? How about a list of students that have transferred out? What about those students that both came and left within the current year? If the answer is yes to any of the above, I can imagine gathering that data from PowerSchool was not a simple task. But now with the use of our Short Term Mobility Report, this data can be retrieved both quickly and easily whether running it from district office or an individual school. Answers to these questions are just a few clicks away.

One of the most frustrating issues when storing grades is going through the process only to find that there are students that don't appear to have a final grade for a class. Typically this means that time has to be taken to review each report card, reach out to the teachers in question, have them update the grades, and then repeat the process of storing grades and printing report cards.

But what if there was a way to make sure all grades were complete before storing grades? Well with the use of our missing grades report, you can do just that. This report will identify all students that don't currently have a final term grade. Enabling admin staff to notify teachers of exactly what grades are missing prior to storing grades.

Schools have seen a massive change in the structure recently. No longer is in-person learning the sole standard for many districts. In addition to five-day in-person learning, schools have also adapted virtual or remote learning options, as well as hybrid models. With the change, however, comes the complexity of tracking which students are assigned to which model. Schools initially employed a variety of methods to track this information from custom fields to tracks to cohorts, the options were varied which led to each district having to develop its own methods of storing and reporting on this data. 

It’s common knowledge in schools and even homes everywhere, that DOE most often refers to the Department of Education, whether nationally or locally.

Yet a key factor for schools to continue offering the best speed to learning for students everywhere is to make sure DOE does not alternately become an acronym for Delays, Omissions and Errors in student and teacher databases.

One area that many schools struggle each year with is identifying days students are considered unexcused absent. If a school uses daily attendance it really isn't much of an issue, but for schools that use meeting attendance, getting an accurate count can be difficult and time-consuming until now. 

When school districts need to locate the home addresses of all their students on a map, most still use primitive and labor-intensive methods adopted over decades.

School districts nationwide have been feeling similar staffing challenges as the rest of the U.S. marketplace.

Fred Sharpsteen does not get too excited over new technology designed for schools after a quarter-century of seeing things come and go.