Repeated Reporting Terms in "Create Final Grade and Reporting Term"?

[denn333]

In the image, are the terms in green (a) necessary, (b) redundant, or (c) optionally useful?

Thank you in advance!

[B_Brock · Accepted solution]

That can be a confusing screen, because it appears that there is repetition...  but it's not actually.

Notice the first row is labeled as 2025-2026, while the second row has boxes for both Semster 1 and Semester 2.

What those boxes represents are the course sections at your school that are configured to meet for those lengths of time. 

Do you have classes that meet for the entire year?  If so, the top box is referring to those specific classes, and the Mx grades are telling PowerSchool that year long classes should generate an Mx final grade.

Same with the Semesters. In this screenshot, PowerSchool is set up so that all classes that are schedule to meet only during semester 1 will generate an M1, M2, and M3 grade, while classes that are scheduled to meet only during semester 2 will generate M4, M5, and M6 grades.

If you look at your Master Course Schedule and have NO sections that are scheduled to meet during any of those discreet periods of time (S1, S2, or the 6 marking periods) then there likely is redundancy, and the setup/configuration could be simplified.

Hope this helps.

Brian

[denn333]

Thank you. So those green-highlighted terms are correct. 

That said, we don't currently have any classes that only meet M1, M2, etc.

(All classes are either Semester or Year.)

It sounds like the bottom row could be deleted, then, yes? 

[B_Brock]

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@denn333 wrote:

It sounds like the bottom row could be deleted, then, yes? 

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* MAYBE *

While the primary purpose of defining scheduling terms is to create those time slots that course sections will be aligned to, there are sometimes other purposes for them.

Several years ago, I realized that I had Quarter Terms defined, but the school was not creating any quarter-in-length classes. So, I deleted them.  All seemed well, until report card time.

On our report cards, we had Data Access Tags (or DATS) to report attendance by term code, and the scheduling terms are where those date ranges are defined.

For example, the DAT ~(*ADAADM; Q1) will produce and Average Daily Attendance percentage for the dates during Q1. In order for that DAT to work though, you have to have the Q1 scheduling term defined.

By deleting those scheduling terms that I thought I no longer needed, I inadvertently caused the report cards to stop displaying information that was important to the school to have on them.

So, use CAUTION when deleting anything, to be sure it's not actually needed, and if in any doubt, I'd recommend leaving it in. It's likely not hurting anything to be there and may save you from future headaches had you removed it.

My .02

Kind regards,

Brian