PowerSchool Community Feedback and Suggestions

[jbidk]

Do you have feedback on how our new PowerSchool Community looks and functions?

Do you have suggestions for how we can make our Community even better?

Please post your feedback and suggestions here. We'll review all posts and share updates. 

We look forward to hearing from you!

[jamiem7]

Thank you for posting your suggestion in the Community! @emulder 

I have submitted a feature request to the PowerSchool Product team on your behalf to enable a feature that will allow users to rearrange the order of tasks.  We thank you for your suggestions to improve Unified Talent TalentEd) for all users

[ecordz]

I'm not sure if this is the best spot for this, but I've now worked in two different schools (a middle school and a high school) who used PowerSchool for attendance, scheduling and grading that have had an issue with students leaving every single class of the day for the bathroom or to go check on something. In a lot of cases, they are using the excuse of the bathroom as avoidance behavior (either purposeful or because they are experiencing anxiety or an body image issue or some other mental health concern).

In each school, teachers have commented that we wish there was an button or some kind of flag we could click on in the attendance area that would give a digital record of the fact they left during class time (either to the nurse, bathroom, etc). This would allow their other teachers and the counslors to readily see when they look at their attendance record and would greatly help identify and address these behaviors promptly; which could possibly help some kids get help sooner if their leaving is due to unaddressed anxiety.

So far both schools have had to wait till enough teachers notice, comment on the issue, and then do an email chain, but that often takes longer to initiate and falls to the wayside as the day is busy. As teachers in schools who use PowerSchool for attendance and scheduling, we already are used to keeping it readily available on our computers, so it would be a simple tool that could have a strong impact for in class presence (since they aren't tardy or absenst per say), as well as the early identification and adressing of avoidance behaviors.

[DanM3]

One suggestion is to document it using Log Entries. Teachers won't be able to see it, but the admin can then track the frequency of it and begin to address the issues with the individual students.

[ecordz]

Thanks for the suggestion @DanM3 . We did try that in my prior school but it put more on the admin and made it difficult for more immediate identifcation and correction of potentially problamatic patterns. Often admin wouldn't have a chance to address this for several weeks, if not months (by then it was either solved naturally or had become a major problem). Additionally, it took influencial power from the closer teacher-student dynamic, so it wasn't an effective solution for what we were wanting. It would be a similar problem with my current school. Admin is focused on major behavioral and academic issues and wants smaller ones (like leaving class in  several classes during the day) to be dealt with by the teachers.

[jamiem7]

Thank you for providing a feature request in the Community! @ecordz 

I have submitted your feature request to the PowerSchool Product Team on your behalf to enable a feature that will allow teachers to log when students leave a class.  

@DanM3 provided a great suggestion to create log entries.  This will help keep track of a student's actions within the student's account for all classes.

[chales]

Hello!

I am a frequent Powerschool user and one of the things I loved about PowerSchool is being able to manipulate the custom report section to get the exact information you need. The generic reports in TalentEd and the built-in custom reports don't capture all of the necessary information on one spreadsheet. For example, there is no report that gets me an employee name, job title, building, and supervisor, but I can run 4 separate reports to get them. Doing this, when merging, you run the risk of not capturing the correct data. There has to be a better way that TalentEd can integrate the same type of custom report feature that PowerSchool has.

[nmiller21]

In order to accurately assess our students using success criteria for standards.  Would you look into creating an option where criteria for rubrics is directly linked to a standard rather than an assignment?  With standards-based-grading there may be multiple components a student must show proficiency within each one.  When you combine all of the scores from the criteria you can then give an overall score for the standard.  Currently, the only way I can use a rubric is to connect it to an assignment, but that assignment is then not connected to a standard.  If I select a standard to add to the grading criteria the program wants to add it as an independent component of the rubric.  We need a standard to become the title of the rubric and all of the category scores create an overall score for the standard.

[jamiem7]

Thank you for posting your suggestion in the Community!

I have submitted a feature request to the PowerSchool Product team on your behalf to enable a feature that will allow the standard to become the title of the rubric and all of the category scores to create an overall score for the standard. We thank you for your suggestions to improve PowerSchool for all users.

[pmorourke]

Please consider making the "Submit" button change colors or show a timestamp when you actually submit attendance, or something visual that shows whether I have submitted or not. When you save your grades, the "Save" button grays out. I NEED that visual. PLEASE! 🙂 

[taylork]

Yes, please!  I'm never entirely sure whether it has gone through.

[Reshma]

@pmorourke   Thank you for posting your suggestion in the PowerSchool Community!!

I have submitted a feature request to the PowerSchool Product team on your behalf, to enable visual features that will allow you to determine rather the attendance has been submitted and grades have been saved.

We thank you for your suggestions to improve PowerSchool for all users!

[ihshepard]

So many things about the PowerTeacherPro gradebook that we have to use this year that need fixing. I am all about efficiency and this new gradebook has yet to be just that for me. 

1. I need to be able to give missing assignment a % so that students know that missing assignments can negatively impact their grades. I don't want to have to go back and enter in zeros or whatever % because that makes MORE work for us when it doesn't need to be. We were able to do this in the old gradebook. 

2. I want to be able to see that missing assignments and excused assignments are shown as such when I go to make a report of the class grades. 

3. I want to be able to see more than 10 students at a time in the scoresheet view. Why is the functional viewing window so small? 

4. In the scoresheet view, I want to be able to see the total points that each assignment is worth instead of having to click click click to find it. ONE STOP SHOPPING should be the goal here. 

5. I thought we were able to edit student names to their preferred name on this gradebook. Haven't been able to find where to do that. 

6. How can we EASILY find out whether a student added or dropped into a class? The old one had an alert system that told us who left or entered and what date they did so. This has been hell the first few weeks of school when it's been a revolving door of students and it doesn't show up on PowerTeacher about changes and now it doesn't show up in the gradebook. 

7. WHY CAN'T GRADES TRANSFER WITH THE STUDENTS WHEN THEY CHANGE TO A DIFFERENT SECTION???????????????????????????????????????????? It's SOOOOO much work to have to hand enter all the grades every time this happens. How come we can send a man to the moon but not make this happen in any gradebooks? 

8. Clarifying question, if you make an assignment by %, it still requires points. Is this because you have to "weigh" the assignment with points too? So if the assignment is one of the major assignments for the class then you'd want to make it worth a lot of points, but it shows grades by %?

Please make these happen!

[jamiem7]

Thank you for participating in the PowerSchool Community! @ihshepard 

1. This is a great suggestion!  I have shared your suggestion with the PowerTeacher Product Team to have assignments automatically scored as a 0 if the student has not completed the assignment after the due date, but allow the teacher to manually edit the score at any time.

2. You should be able to view the missing and excused assignments within the report of class grades.  Would you please provide the steps you are taking to access the class grades report to allow PowerSchool and other Community members to assist?

3. The list of students appear based on the vertical resolution of your screen.  You should be able to view a larger number of students by zooming out on the screen resolution or turning your monitor in a vertical layout.

4. I have also submitted this feature request to the PowerTeacher Product Team to review the ability of adding a feature that will show you how many points each assignment is worth.

5. Admin within PowerSchool Student Information System should be able to add a preferred name for a student.

6. Teachers should be able to view the students that have been dropped from a class by selecting the Student tab and choosing the Show Dropped link.  PowerSchool SIS Admin should be able to set up a notification that will email teachers when a student is added to a class.  If you do not receive notifications currently, I recommend reaching out to a PowerSchool Admin to review the process of setting up the email notification for teachers.

7. There is a new feature within PowerTeacher Pro that will allow teachers to transfer student scores when a student changes schedules.  I have added the steps below that should guide you through the process of transferring student scores.

1. On the menu bar, select Students. Students who enrolled in the class after the term's start date are indicated with New - [date] under their name.
2. Select the student's name.
3. On the student Quick Menu, select Transfer Scores. Or, if you are viewing the student's Assignments page, select the gear icon and choose Transfer Scores.
4. Use the filter options to limit the number of items appearing on the page. If the filter is not visible, click the Gear and select Show Filter.
5. Choose the dropped class from the From Class menu.
6. Choose the class you want to copy scores to from the To Class menu.
7. From the To Class Assignment column, select the assignment mapping.
   • If the assignment ID or assignment name matches between the From Class and To Class, the matching assignment appears in the To Class column automatically.
   • If there are multiple assignment names that match between the From Class and To Class, but there is one unique due date match among the multiple exact name matches, the assignment with the matching due date appears in the To Class column automatically.
   • If there are no matching IDs or names between the From Class and To Class, then no suggested assignment appears, but you can browse available assignments and select one for score mapping.
8. Click Details to view transfer score details. Messages on the details screen note any potential issues with the score transfer.
   1. Click Transfer Scores.

8. An assignment score is calculated as a percent of the total points within an assignment.  Teachers can add weight to an assignment. A weight will show the percentage based on the weighted points.  For example, if an assignment is set up with 100 points but a weight of 2, the assignment will be out of 200 points.

[ihshepard]

Thank you for your thorough reply. Here are my responses to the following:

1. Can you have them set missing assignments to 40% or give us the opportunity to adjust it ourselves? I only want to alert them that their grade is negatively impacted and not hugely so by a zero. 

2. I click on 'Reports' tab, then 'Scoresheet Report' and there isn't anything else i can do to make it show up except 'Run Report'. Here is a snapshot of the report that comes up. 

One student has the SL Summer HW excused but it isn't indicated in this report. He also has the 1st vocab quiz marked as missing and it doesn't show up here. 

3. That's too bad. vertical layouts take away the number of assignments I can see at once. I just want all the information in one place without having to click for it. 

4. Thank you!

5. Who is this Admin person? Is there a contact for us within the district? 

6. The 'Show Dropped' isn't helpful if it's always ABC'd and doesn't show us the dates that their dropped. The old one would show us who dropped, when, and kept them in the order that they were dropped. I do not want email notifications of added students. My inbox is already full and provides me with enough anxiety everytime I get new mail. I want to go to one place either in PowerTeacher or the gradebook to find who dropped and who added and when. 

7. I am not getting any of the options you mentioned. There is no indication that a student who recently added has a date next to their name, there is no 'Student Quick Menu' and there definitely isn't a 'Transfer Score' option anywhere. Even in the Assignments gear icon. Here is what I see when I go there:

8. Thanks for the clarification. Since we're not allowed to use category weights this year I didn't realize we could weigh individual assignments. 

Last question, and maybe you're not quite the person I should ask this to, but I'm having a really hard time moving backwards to points-based grading instead of standards-based grading. I know this gradebook can do standards-based grading but we're not allowed to do that this year. Is there a better way to set up the gradebook to be more standards-aligned? I know some teachers make each category a standard, but what are the limitations to that? 

Thanks for your input. 

[jamiem7]

Thank you for your detailed response!

1. I have added a request to the current suggestion to enable the ability to allow teachers to choose the default grade that will be assigned to missing assignments.

2.  You should be able to review this information within the multi-assignment report.  I have provided the steps to access the information below.

3. We have shared your suggestion of the vertical view with the PowerTeacher Pro Team!

4. You are most welcome!  Thank you for sharing suggestions to improve PowerTeacher Pro for all users.

5. I recommend reaching out to your School Administrator to request assistance connecting with a PowerSchool Admin.

6. PowerTeacher Pro does not show the date students were dropped from a course.  We have requested this information is reviewed by the Product Team to see if it can be added within the product.

7. This feature was added to the latest version of PowerTeacher Pro, 19.4.  We recommend connecting with your PowerSchool Admin to confirm if the district has updated PowerTeacher Pro to the most recent version.

I do not believe there is a limitation to adding categories as standards.  I am happy to do further research of this with the PowerTeacher Pro Team. However, I recommend working with other users within your school district to discuss best practices when the school is requested standard-based grading is not used in the school district.

[dabergman]

When a teacher is adding scores to a class in the PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook, selecting a score to mark should not only highlight that selected assignment, but it should also highlight the name of the student on the left-most column.

For example, if I am entering a score for Bob on the "Final Exam", and I select the score, Bob's name should be highlighted so it is clear I have selected the score for him, and not for a student above or below him.

That is all, thank you!

[ElstonS]

Hi @dabergman, 

Thank you for participating in our PowerSchool Community!

We don't have this feature built into Powerteacher Pro Gradebook at this time but I will submit a feature request to the PowerSchool PowerTeacher Pro Product Team on your behalf so as to allow highlighting the selected assignment and the name of the student on the left-most column when a teacher is adding the score to a class in PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook. 

Please do let us know if you have any follow up questions. 

[knfox]

I'd like the ability to edit students' names in the PowerSchool gradebook, so that their name appears how I'm familiar with the student. Examples of this might be that the student goes by a nickname ('Howie' instead of 'Harrison'), goes by their middle name instead of their legal first name, or uses a different name entirely (transgendered students). I used to be able to do this with the older version of Gradebook, but it seems this is no longer supported. Please bring it back!

[knfox]

Another feature I'd like to see in this new PowerSchool Gradebook is the ability to edit the order students' names appear in the gradebook. With the old Gradebook, when you opened the student list, you could drag and drop them where you wanted their name to appear. This was useful when I had a student transfer in later in the year and I wanted their name to appear at the bottom instead of alphabetically so it would align with my paper gradebook. I know that the new Gradebook allows me to toggle between 'alphabetical' sort and 'new students last' sort, but unfortunately that second option also includes kids that have been in my class since day 2 of school (which was before I started putting in grades). I usually wait a couple weeks to set up my gradebook to account for the multiple class changes at the beginning of the year, and once I decide to set things up, I'd like everyone AT THAT POINT to be sorted alphabetically, with any newcomers AFTER that placed at the end. With drag and drop, I can do that. Without it, I'm S.O.L.

[ElstonS]

Thank you for participating in the PowerSchool Community!

The ability to edit student's names in the PowerSchool Gradebook so that their name appears in a manner familiar with the student and the ability to edit the order student's names appear in the Gradebook is not currently built into the newer version of Gradebook. 

I have submitted these as a feature request to the PowerSchool SIS Product team and will share the emphasis to review the ability to edit student's names in the PowerSchool Gradebook so that their name appears in a manner familiar with the student and the ability to edit the order student's names appear in the Gradebook. 

Please let us know if you have any further questions. 

[ccaron]

I used to use PowerTeacherPro using Google Chrome as my browser. Unfortunately, Google Chrome and PowerTeacherPro do not work well together so I now have to use Safari as my browser. Using Safari, I have noticed that I can no longer use the "tab" button as a shortcut to navigate from one box to the other when I have typed a comment about a student's mark. I used to be able to type a comment, press "tab" and then use the keyboard arrows to navigate to the next box I needed to go to. I now have to use my mouse to select a different box. I understand this is a small issue but I am wondering if this is something you can fix to make working more efficient.