Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Calculating Yearly Grades

Since it's almost the end of the third quarter, parents are now starting to take a closer look at their children's final average, and I am starting to get inquiries about how these are calculated.

REMEMBER, the default calculation for Final Averages is set to Total Points.  This means that Powerschool will ignore any weighting that you may have used in your Quarterly Grade calculations, and will simply add all scores together, and divide by the total number of scores.

The screen below shows the initial setup in Powerschool.




If your intention is to average all 4 quarter grades together, then you need to change the grade setup.  The screen shot below shows how to set this up.  Make sure you have selected Y1 as the reporting term, and click on term weights.  The initial percentages for each term are set by dividing 100 by the number of terms, in this case 4, so all percentages are 25%.  Note : If you have terms set up for Mid Term Exams and Final Exams, those terms will also be listed.


Since the percentages are preset to 25%.  You should not have to change these.  However, If your school has separate terms set up for MidTerm Exams and Final Exams, then you will also see M1 and F1 along with Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.  You will probably have to adjust the percentages in this case to match your grading policy.  The usual setup in this case is Q1- 20%, Q2 - 20%, M1 - 10%, Q3 - 20%, q4 - 20% and F1- 10%