Permanently Store Grades
In PowerSchool, student records include two types of grades: current and historical. Current grades are the students' grades in each of their teachers' PowerTeacher systems. Historical grades are final grades, or grades that are permanently stored in the students' records. Historical grades appear on report cards and transcripts. At the end of each grading term, use the Permanently Store Grades function to copy and store the students' current grades in PowerTeacher as historical grades.
By default, PowerSchool administrators have 30 calendar days after the term end date to store or re-store grades. The "term end date" refers to the end of the scheduling term associated to a given class. For example, when storing Q1 grades for a Quarter 1 class, administrators have until 30 days after the last day of Quarter 1 to store those grades. However, when storing Q1 grades for Year Long classes, administrators have until 30 days after the end of the year to store those grades. For more information, see Final Grades Setup. Changes to grades beyond the 30 days within the current school year term, can also be performed using the Show All Terms setting.
Note: Changes to grades beyond the 30 days, but not within the current school year term, would need to be performed either manually on the student's Historical Grades page or by importing the grades.
Before permanently storing grades, be sure that you set up grade scales, final grades, and the current grade display.
Also, you should run several reports before permanently storing grades. The Student Schedule Listing report lists the current grades and any missing grades for selected students. For more information, see Run the Student Schedule Listing Report. Print the Class Rosters report for teachers to verify that all the grades are correct. For more information, see Run the Class Rosters (PDF) Report.
Warning: Be sure to use this feature carefully, as storing grades affects historical grades, which affect various parts of PowerSchool, including (but not limited to) GPAs, transcripts, and graduation progress.
Note: This procedure may only be performed at the school level.
To complete this procedure, follow these steps:
- On the start page, choose System under Setup in the main menu.
- Under Grades, click Permanently Store Grades.
Enter a two or three-digit code or select a code to indicate the term in which the students earned the grades, such as Q1 or S1. The first character must be a letter, and the second and third characters must be a number. This value is stored as TermBinsName in the StoredGrades table and is accessible using DDA, DDE, importing, and exporting.
Do not use the same store code twice in one year. The system will overwrite the grades you stored under the store code the first time with the grades you store the second time.
- Enter the term code from which you want to save the grades. The term code is usually the same as the store code, such as Q1 or S1.
- Using the Exclude/Include Class Enrollments section, you can store current grades based on students' enrollment or dropped class dates. If you leave the date-related fields blank, PowerSchool stores a grade for every enrollment record, including classes that students dropped during the term. Most schools enter a two-week grace period at both the beginning and end of the term. This allows for all of the add/drop procedures at the beginning of the term to be ignored in the store grades process. Also, PowerSchool does not store grades for students who enroll in your school during the last two weeks of the term. You can select any combination of the following:
- Select Exclude enrollment records where the student enrolled in the class after this date and enter the date.
- Select Exclude enrollment records where the student dropped the class before this date and enter the date.
- Select Include only enrollment records that are currently active and that were active on this date and enter the date.
- Enter Additional Filter Options. Additional Filter Options include:
- Store grades for currently selected () students only to filter by student selection
- Request that grades be stored only for a specific section to store grades for students in a specific course section only, enter the course and section numbers, separated by a period. For example, enter 113.04 for Course 113, Section 04. You can do this when teachers are late in entering their final grades or when testing the process of storing grades. Store grades for one course section before you store grades for all course sections.
- Student Grade Level to filter by grade level
- Track to filter by track
- School Exit Date to filter by exit date range (the first day the student's enrollment is not active or the day after the student's last day in class). Enter the date range by which you want to filter the storing selection, or click the Calendar icon to select a date. This setting does not find students who were enrolled through the specified range but finds students whose school exit date falls within the specified range.
- For each term, choose a Store method. If Store with credit is selected, enter a percentage of the course credit to award at the time grades are permanently stored. If Store with no credit is selected, the field is automatically populated with a 0 which cannot be updated.
Select Yes for Show All Terms? to show all terms for the current school year term. By default terms that are in progress or recently passed appear. If you are storing grades for a term that is not in progress or recently passed, you may need to display all terms. If a term was already stored, you will overwrite the grades for that term which may affect graduation credit, GPAs, and transcripts.
If the Show All Terms is set to Yes and the server date does not fall within a scheduling term, the term defaults to the Default Term When Between School Years setting. For more information, see Miscellaneous District Settings.
- Select whether to store grades for all schools or for the selected school only. For example, if a middle school student takes a class at the high school, the middle school must select this option when permanently storing grades. When storing grades for students taking classes at other schools, the TermID fields must match between the schools for those enrollments to store correctly.
- Select which school name to use when storing grades.
- Select Options for withholding credit to apply options for withholding credit. If selected, a student may be allowed to miss a certain number of classes. However, if the student exceeds the allowable attendance points, then the student will not receive credit for the course and any credit they had earned will be cleared. If you have selected this option, complete the following:
- Enter the number of times a student is allowed to miss a class.
- Enter the date range of the course.
- Enter the grade the student will receive if the attendance points are exceeded.
- Enter a value of zero or higher to replace any existing GPA point value for the affected grades or leave blank if you do not want to replace any existing GPA point value for the affected grades.
- Enter a comment if you want the original grade the student earned to appear with the comment.
Choose the options you want to apply for storing potential and earned credit for Advanced Potential and Earned Credit Options.
Advanced Potential and Earned Credit Options may or may not be used with the Variable Credit Storing Preferences. If used together, the Advanced Potential and Earned Credit Options withhold earned or potential credit even if a teacher has specified awarded (earned) or attempted (potential).
For example, if a teacher has specified 1 for Variable Awarded Credit and Variable Attempted Credit in PowerTeacher Gradebook, then the administrator uses the Advanced Potential and Earned Credit Options to Store Potential Credit Only, then the result would be 1 credit for attempted (potential) and no credit for awarded (earned).- Indicate which credit hours you want to store under Variable Credit Storing Preferences. These options only apply if variable credit is enabled. Variable credit may be enabled for an individual section or for multiple sections.
- Select an option for Store this when teacher has not entered variable credit hours to determine how to handle variable credit where no value has been entered by teachers.
- Select an option for Round or truncate to determine how to handle variable credit values entered by teachers.
- Choose the Number of decimal places in variable credit hours.
- Indicate whether to Apply Repeated Course Grade Suppression Policy Rules. If enabled, stored grades related to grade scales that allow repeated course grade suppression will be evaluated by the repeated course grade suppression rules during the permanently store grades process.