Introduction
After grades have been entered by teachers in their GradeBook at the end of a reporting period, it is the responsibility of the admin team to take a "copy" or "snapshot" of the grades in the Gradebook and store them in PowerSchool for archiving and reporting. This process of taking a "snapshot" of student grades at the end of a Reporting Term is known as the Permanently Store Grades process. Grades are usually stored at the end of each Reporting Term, and at the end of each School Year.
The Permanently Store Grades process can be run by going to Start Page > School Management > Academics -> Store Grades. Be sure to use the correct Reporting Term and Historical Store Code when running this process. An in-depth step-by-step guide for running this process is provided below.
NOTE: Official Report Cards, Transcripts, and Honour Rolls are not generated by the PowerTeacher Gradebook. The data for Report Cards and Honour Rolls are stored in the "Historical Grades" archive inside of PowerSchool. Archiving grades in PowerSchool, prevents accidental changes to the student’s official academic record. It also helps to improve the transportability of academic information throughout the PCS district.
Step By Step Guide
1. From the Start Page scroll down to School Management, -> Academics and select Store Grades.
2. In the Which Grades section, select the appropriate Reporting Term and Historical Store Code. This is usually a two-character value such as T1 or T2 to indicate the Reporting Period for which you would like to store grades. In most cases, the same two-character code will be used for both boxes.
3. In the Exclude/Include Class Enrollments section, select the THIRD option titled:
Include only enrolment records that are currently active and that were active on this date
4. In the Date Field, next to the third option, enter the date of the LAST day of the Reporting Period. For example, if you are storing grades for Term 2, then use the last day of Term 2 in the date field provided.
NOTE: Steps 4 and 5 ensure that classes that have been dropped during the year are NOT included on the Report Card. For example, if a student switched from one English class to another English class in Term 1, then you would not normally want the dropped class to show on the Report Card. The three options in this section allow you to be more selective in the grades that you choose to store or ignore for dropped or incomplete classes. We only use the THIRD option in this example, but understanding when the first two options should be used, could be very helpful in certain scenarios.
5. If storing grades for a specific selection of students, select the box available in the Additional Filter Options section. You may need to expand this section by clicking on the downward pointing arrow. Do NOT select this option if you wish to store grades for the entire school. Skip to Step 7 if you want to store grades for the whole school.
6. Next, scroll down to the Classes by Term Length section. This section provides options for storing grades for the different types of courses available at your school. For example, if your school only offers FULL YEAR courses, then you would only need to use the option for FULL YEAR courses.
In this example, the school only has FULL YEAR courses, so we would simply select the Store with credit option for the FULL YEAR (2014) classes. Some schools however, have courses that only run for a single Semester or single Term. For each RELEVANT category, you would normally choose the Store with Credit option from the pop-up menu.
7. Once you have identified the types of courses for which you would like to store grades, you then need to enter a percentage to represent the AMOUNT of credit that should be awarded for the course at this particular time. In this example we are storing grades for all 2014 (FULL YEAR) courses but ONLY for the Term 2 reporting period. Term 2 by itself only represents 25% of the full length of the course, so we will only store 25% credit at this time. The remainder of the credit for FULL YEAR courses will be stored at the end of each Term or Quarter.
8. Repeat Steps 7- 8 for all Class Types that apply to your school. For example, if you have Rotational Classes that only run during Term 2, you would select Store with Credit for the Term 2 option and type 100% in the % of Course Credit field. In other words, because we are storing grades for Term 2 and Term 2 is now complete, we can store 100% of the course grade for any classes that ran only for Term 2.
9. Similarly, use the same logic presented in Steps 7-9 for any Semester Courses that are offered at your school. Using this example again, we have Creative Technology classes that run only during Semester 1. We stored 50% of the credit for CT in Term 1 and will now store the remaining 50% of credit for CT in Term 2.
10. Ignore any of the terms that do not apply to you at this time. For example, because this is for the T2 reporting period we do not have to store grades for Term 3 or Semester 2 until later in the year.
NOTE: By default, ONLY terms that are currently in progress or that have recently passed, will appear in the Classes by Term Length section. If you are trying to store grades for a term that isn’t listed, you will need to change Show all terms to Yes in order to see the other terms available for processing.
If you do need to select a Term that is not currently in progress you will see a notification like the one shown below. To confirm that you would still like to store grades for this term go ahead and click Yes.
11. Once you have correctly assigned credit and are ready to proceed, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Store Current Grades.
12. You will then be taken to a Permanently Store Grades Progress page and will receive a Please Wait message as shown below.
13. If the process ran successfully you will see a screen like the one shown below. The results will show:
- The number of students that were processed or included in the process
- The number of existing grades were updated
- The number of new grades that were created or inserted
IMPORTANT REMINDER: If the Grades for a particular term have already been stored, running the Permanently Store Grades process again will OVERWRITE the grades for that term. If changes have been made to the Gradebook since the time that you first Stored Grades, Graduation credit, GPAs, and Transcripts will be affected.
Quick Recap
1. Navigate to: Start Page > Setup > System > System Administrator > Permanently Store Grades
2. In the Which Grades section, select the appropriate Reporting Term and Historical Store Code
3. In the Exclude/Include Class Enrollments section, select Include only enrolment records that are currently active and that were active on this date. In the date field provided, enter a date near the end of the reporting term
4. Use the Additional Filter Options section if necessary
5. In the Classes by Term Length section choose Store with Credit for each RELEVANT category and enter the percent of course credit that needs to be stored at this particular time
6. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Store Current Grades
7. Check the Permanently Store Grades Process page to ensure that grades have been stored correctly