Grading Administration - Honor Rolls · GRADING ADMINISTRATION: HONOR ROLLS ... Honor roll definitions consist of criteria which define who is ... A lower number means a higher ranking

Genesis Student Information System Administrator’s Documentation

Genesis Honor Roll Administration Page 1 of 22

GRADING ADMINISTRATION: HONOR ROLLS

I. Introduction to Honor Rolls in Genesis II. Running Honor Rolls

A. Pre-Requisites for Running Honor Rolls B. Run Built-In Honor Rolls C. Run User Defined Honor Rolls D. Test Run an Honor Roll E. The Students on Honor Roll Screen

III. User Defined Honor Rolls A. Creating Honor Rolls B. Modifying Honor Rolls C. Delete an Honor Roll

IV. Defining the Effect of Course Grades on Honor Rolls A. Alpha Grades and Honor Rolls B. Numeric Grades and Honor Rolls

V. The Effect of Course Definitions on Honor Rolls

I. Introduction to Honor Rolls in Genesis Honor Rolls An honor roll is a list of students who match a set of criteria based on the following:

‐ A student’s grades: the types, number and quality of grades the student earns. ‐ The types and number of courses the student is taking ‐ Possibly, the student’s attendance ‐ Possibly, the student’s discipline record

How do Honor Rolls get defined? Prior to December, 2007, all honor rolls were built‐in. Users could request the precise honor rolls they needed for their schools but they could not define those honor rolls themselves: there was no user interface that allowed users to create their own honor rolls. This document introduces the Genesis User Defined Honor Roll system. As of December, 2007, Genesis includes a powerful and flexible mechanism allowing users to create and run their own honor rolls. This document describes this new mechanism. Developing your own Honor Rolls The new mechanism makes it easy for you to define, modify, test run and officially run honor rolls. Any rule that you have in your built‐in honor rolls can be expressed via the new user‐defined honor roll scheme. In addition, there is a robust “test honor roll” tool to allow you to try out new honor roll selection rules. The Basics of a User Defined Honor Roll Honor roll definitions consist of criteria which define who is eligible and a set of rules to select those who have the grades to qualify.



• Basic selection criteria – These define who is eligible and what Marking Periods are included:

o Grade level & Marking Period, and the rank of the honor roll itself o Minimum credit load a student must be taking o Absence of any “automatic rejection” comments in the students’ grade records. o “Active on” date – includes only students active on the selected date.

• Rules to select the students who made the honor roll – These are rules, such as “must

have all A’s” which define who of those students who are eligible actually have the academic records to qualify for the honor roll. Each honor roll may have a list of rules. This is all described in Section III A. “Creating an Honor Roll” below.

Honor Rolls are Ranked When a school has more than one honor roll, the honor rolls are ranked, with one or more of the honor rolls being considered “higher” than others. In Genesis, each honor roll has a ‘rank’ number. A lower number means a higher ranking. Rank = 10 is a higher rank than Rank =20. In the illustration below, there are 3 honor rolls appearing in rank order (top down): Honor rolls are listed on the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen in rank order. The highest rank honor roll appears at the top of the list. Students can optionally appear only on the highest ranked honor roll for which they qualify, or on all honor rolls for which they qualify (this is set per honor roll). Genesis Database Tables that Effect Honor Roll Computation The diagram below summarizes the main tables that contribute to the computation of honor rolls. The “Honor Roll Definitions” specify how the system is to compute the honor rolls. The other tables all contain flags and other data fields for those computations.

Curriculum File for a Course Use-for-honor-roll Core course

Alpha Grades Table Category code Passing grade? Effects on Honor Roll

COMPUTEHONOR ROLLS

HONOR ROLL DEFINITIONS

Grading Comments

Teacher posts grades & comments

Marking Period Table

High Honor Roll Rank = 20

Principal’s Honor Roll Rank = 10

Honor Roll Rank = 30



The database tables that affect honor rolls include:

• Alpha Grades Table – The alpha grades themselves each carry 3 flags that can affect whether or not a student who receives the grade is eligible for an honor roll. These flags are:

o Category code – Alpha grades can be categorized and honor roll rules can specify a grade category instead of a single specific grade. For example, the Category of “A” usually includes A+, A and A‐; the Category of “B” usually includes of B+, B and B‐. Etc. The Category code is the category to which this specific grade belongs.

o Passing Grade – This is a simple flag indicating whether or not the alpha grade represents a passing grade or a failing grade. Honor roll rules will often rule out inclusion of a student who has received any failing grades.

o Effect on Honor Roll – Each alpha grade has one of three values for this field: INCLUDE – If the field for the alpha grade is set to INCLUDE, the

grade counts toward the honor roll. IGNORE– If the field for the alpha grade is set to IGNORE, the grade is

not counted toward the honor roll, but the student is not disqualified from being on honor rolls.

RESTRICTED ‐ If the field for the alpha grade is set to RESTRICTED, the student is disqualified from being on any honor roll. For example, an alpha grade of “F” might be set to “RESTRICTED”, thus any student who receives an F would be disqualified from all honor rolls. (This is one of several ways to indicate that students who receive a failing grade cannot be on any honor roll).

• Curriculum File (Course definitions) – The Curriculum File contains one entry for every

course taught in the school. Each course definition contains a flag that indicates whether the course should or should not contribute to the calculation of honor rolls.

o Use for Honor Roll – If this flag is set to Yes the course is considered for honor rolls. If the flag is set to No, the course grades do not count for honor roll calculations. The student taking the course is not disqualified from honor roll consideration; it is simply that the grades for this course cannot be used to compute the honor roll. For example, PE courses are often excluded from honor rolls, because PE is not considered an academic subject.

o Core Course – This field can be used to categorize the course and honor role rules can apply to particular core course categories. For example, if students are required to earn a certain grade – or better – in one specific course, in order to make the honor roll, that course can be placed in its own category and an honor roll rule can be created to refer to that specific category.

• Grading Comments/Comment Categories –Grading Comment categories can be used to

disqualify a student from an honor roll. Honor Rolls definitions include an option that means “If a student gets any comments from this category, they will be disqualified from being on the honor roll.” “This category” is selected by you, the honor roll administrator. For example, you can create a Comment Category called “Reasons for Honor Roll Disqualification”, with comments in it such as “Too many absences”, “Discipline issues”… If the student receives a comment from that category for any of



their courses they can be automatically disqualified from being on an honor roll (this decision is made by honor roll).

• Honor Roll Definitions –This table, whose components are listed in Section III A,

specifies the basic requirements for the honor roll (e.g. credit minimum) as well as the specific rules for inclusion in an honor roll (e.g. must have all As).

Alpha Grade Interactions that produce the Honor Rolls In an Alpha grading scheme, when the teacher posts the Marking Period grade, the Gradebook Marking Period Average is converted directly to a Letter Grade, usually in the range A to F. The Alpha Grades Table is used to convert the numeric average to a letter grade (e.g. B+). The letter grade is used for a variety of things:

• It is stored in the student’s academic history. • It is used (flags permitting) to compute a GPA‐value and then to compute the actual

GPA(s). • It is used to compute whether or not the student is eligible for any honor roll (the

subject of this document). Numeric Grade Interactions that produce the Honor Rolls In a numeric grading scheme, a Numeric Grade is posted by the teacher. If the teacher is using the Genesis Gradebook, the Gradebook Marking Period Average is first rounded to a whole

DetermineGPA‐Values

Genesis Teacher

Gradebook

MP Average=89.6 ComputeGPA 3.7

Curriculum File for a Course

Student Records:Academic History

Alpha Grades Table

COMPUTE HONOR ROLLS


DetermineGPA‐Values

Genesis Teacher

Gradebook


MP Average=89.6 ComputeGPA

Student Records:Academic History

COMPUTE HONOR ROLLS

Numeric Grade Parameters Rounded Whole Number Grade = 90

90


Curriculum File for a Course

Grading Comments

Grading Comments




number value and then ‘posted’ to the Grading Module. For example, an 89.6 would be rounded up to a 90. The Grading Module then uses Numeric grade parameters and information in the Course Catalog (“Curriculum File”) to compute both weighted and unweighted “GPA‐Value” of the Numeric Grade. In a regular Numeric Grading scheme, the ‘unweighted Numeric grade’ is the 90 itself and the ‘weighted Numeric grade’ is a small variation on the 90: 91, 90.9, etc. Weighting is usually done by adding a small value (e.g. ‘1’ or ‘2’) or multiplying (90 x 1.1). As with an alpha grade, the numeric grade is used for a variety of things:

• It is stored in the student’s academic history. • It is used (flags permitting) to compute a GPA‐value and then to compute the actual

GPA(s). • It is used to compute whether or not the student is eligible for any honor roll (the

subject of this document). Running an Honor Roll An honor roll is “run” in a set of steps that first determines who is eligible and then eliminates students who do not meet all the specific criteria (Rules) for the honor roll: Step 1: Determine Eligibility: This determines which students will be considered for the Honor Roll.

• Include Students in Grades – Which grade levels are eligible for this honor roll? • Students Active on Date – When did a student enter the school? • Minimum Credit Load – Which students are taking sufficient courses?

Step 2: Eliminate Students who are specifically flagged as ineligible:

• If a Student receives any comment in this category ______________ ‐ A comment in the designated Comment Category is an a priori rejection. Students receiving any comment in the designated category are eliminated from further consideration. The specific comment would indicate the reason (e.g. Attendance, Conduct).

Step 3: Apply the Honor Roll’s Academic Criteria Rules to determine which students meet the criteria:

• The set of Rules defined for the honor roll are applied in order (Honor roll rules have sequence #’s which determine the order in which they will be applied).

• If a student fails to meet a Rule that Rule is then stored as the reason the student is rejected: no additional Rules are tested for that student (Note that a student could fail to meet several Rules, but only the first Rule they fail to meet will appear as the reason).

• If a student meets the criteria for a Rule, they are tested against the next Rule, in order.

• If a student meets the criteria for all Rules, they are placed on that honor roll unless:

o The honor roll’s “Student cannot appear on a higher ranked Honor Roll” flag is checked and

o The student has already met the criteria for a higher ranked honor roll.



II. Running Honor Rolls

A. Pre-Requisites for Running Honor Rolls Before building an Honor Roll, it is necessary to have the following tasks already completed and tested in Genesis:

• The Grading Module must be completely setup and tested; including: o Passing / Failing parameters for Numeric grades (See Section IV B. below). o Passing / Failing flags set correctly for Alpha grades. o Ignore / Restrict flags set correctly on the Alpha Grades screen (See Section IV

A. below)

• The Curriculum File must have the “Used in Honor Roll” flag set correctly on the courses that are intended to be used to compute Honor Rolls. The flag should be set to Yes for all courses which will contribute to honor rolls. The flag should be set to No if a course is to be excluded from being considered for honor rolls (See Section V below).

• Grades must be posted for the Marking Period that you are running Honor Rolls for. It is

nearly impossible to correctly test your Honor Roll without real data.

B. Running a Built-In Honor Roll Grading Honor Rolls Honor Rolls

Figure 1 - The Grading Honor Rolls Honor Rolls Screen



Running Built-In Honor Rolls for a Marking Period/Semester/Year Existing Genesis installations have built‐in honor rolls. This section describes how to run those honor rolls and view the resulting lists of students. Procedure to Run Built-In Honor Rolls

1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls Honor Rolls screen. 2. At the top of the of the screen, locate the “Generate All Honors for this Marking Period”

control:

3. Select the Marking Period for which to run the honor rolls:

4. Click the button. This initiates the running of all the honor rolls for the selected Marking Period. You will see a continuously updated status message:

5. The honor roll will run to completion and a PDF icon will appear next to honor

rolls:



C. Running User Defined Honor Rolls Procedure to Run All User Defined Honor Rolls for a Marking Period

1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen. 2. Select the Marking Period for which to run all the honor rolls:

3. Click the button. This initiates the running of all the honor rolls for the selected Marking Period. A confirmation dialog is displayed:

4. Click OK to continue and run the Honor Roll. Click Cancel to abandon the run. If you click OK, processing will take place, and a “processing” message appears:

5. When all honor rolls for the selected Marking Period have been run, the results are displayed in the “# in Honor Roll” column in the honor roll list:

Each entry specifies the date the honor roll was most recently run and the number of students who qualified for the honor roll. Note that these are “real” runs of the honor rolls, not trial runs.

6. To view the screen for the honor roll, click the highlighted number of students who

qualified for the honor roll: . This brings up the screen for the selected honor roll (See Section III E below).

7. To view a printable list of students who qualified for the selected honor roll, click on the

icon. This will bring up a grade by grade report:

Figure 2 – PDF list of students who qualified for the honor roll, by grade



Procedure to Run or Test Run a Single User Defined Honor Roll 1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen. 2. Locate the Honor Roll you wish to run:

3. If this is to be an official run click the button corresponding to the Honor Roll you wish to run. The results of official runs are placed in students’

records. If this is to be a trial run, click the corresponding button. The results of a trial run are not stored in students’ records. A popup dialog will be displayed:

4. Click OK to continue and run the Honor Roll. Click Cancel to abandon the run. If you click OK, processing will take place:

5. When processing is complete, the list of students who qualified for the Honor Roll are displayed on the Grading Honor Rolls Students on Honor Roll screen:

Figure 3 – The Grading Honor Rolls Students on Honor Roll screen showing a list of students

who did and did not qualify for the selected Honor Roll



D. Test Run a User Defined Honor Roll

Figure 4

Procedure to Test Run an Honor Roll

1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen.

2. Locate the Honor Roll you wish to test and click the button. This runs the Honor Roll and creates a ‘test’ list of the students who do and (optionally) do not qualify for the Honor Roll:

Figure 5

3. To view the students who were rejected (that is, who did not qualify for this Honor Roll),

click the “Yes” radio button to the right of the “Show students that did not qualify?” question.

Figure 6



E. The Students on Honor Roll Screen

When a user defined honor roll has been run, or test run, the results are displayed on the screen, shown below in Figure 6. This screen allows you to

Figure 7 – A view of the Grading Honor Rolls Students on Honor Roll screen

The Students on Honor Roll Screen Controls

At the top of the screen, there are a set of 4 controls: • The control – Clicking the “Yes” option shows all

students: those that qualified for the honor roll and those that were rejected. For each rejected student the reason that caused the rejection is listed. Clicking the “No” option lists only the students who qualified for this honor roll. “No” is the default. Note that only one rejection reason is listed for any rejected student: this may not be the only reason the student failed to qualify for the honor roll, it is merely the first rule, in the list of rules, that the student did not meet. Once a student fails a rule, they are not tested for the other rules.

• The Switch – This switches the list of students from the most recently run official results of this honor roll to the most recent trial run results. This allows you to compare the “real” results against trial results. This is helpful if you are attempting to update or fine tune the honor roll rules.

• The button ‐ This causes the results of the currently selected option (i.e. the “real” or “trial” results – see above) to be cleared and the selected version to be re‐run.

• The button ‐ This clears the results of the currently selected option (i.e. the “real” or “trial” results – see above). If the purged run was a “real” run, information in the student records is purged.

There is the ability to quickly navigate to a particular student’s current year grade history screen:

• Clicking the highlighted student id of any listed student brings up that student’s Student Data Student Grading Overall screen.

There is also the ability to navigate from one user defined honor roll to another:

• ‐ This control allows you to select a different honor roll to run.



III. User Defined Honor Rolls

A. Creating an Honor Roll Grading Honor Rolls User Defined

Procedure to Create a User-Defined Honor Roll

1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen. 2. At the bottom of the screen enter information to create a new honor roll:

• Enter honor roll Name • Select the Marking Period for which this honor roll will be computed. • Enter the “Sequence number”. This rank orders the new honor roll. Lower

sequence numbers mean a higher rank. E.g. If you have multiple honor rolls (e.g. High Honor Roll, Honor Roll), the ‘higher’ honor rolls should have lower sequence numbers (that is, higher rank).

3. Click the Add button to create the new honor roll. This brings up the Grading Honor Rolls Modify screen.

4. Enter the additional information required to describe and define the honor roll (these fields are described below):

• Description • Marking Period • Grade Collections included • Minimum credit load • Rank (of the Honor Roll, not the students) • Include Students in Grades (select grade levels) • Students Active on Date • If a Student receives any comment in this category • Student cannot appear on a higher ranked Honor Roll

5. Click Save to update the Honor Roll definition. 6. Define the Rules that will determine how students are included or excluded



• An initial Rule requiring that each student have at least 5 grades is created for each Honor Roll

• The initial 5 grade Rule can be deleted if desired. • Create additional Rules. The possible Rules are described below. • When done proceed to testing the Honor Roll (See below).

Honor Roll Fields

• Name ‐ The name of the Honor Roll. This name will appear on all reports that print the Honor Roll. Example names: Principal’s List, High Honor Roll, Honor Roll.

• Description – This is a long description of the honor roll. This description only appears

on this setup screen. It can be used to describe the rules that this honor roll is intended to have. Example: “All students with a 90 average; no grade lower than a 75”.

• Marking Period – The marking period this honor roll is run for.

• Grade Collections Included – An honor roll typically applies only to a single grade collection (e.g. MP3) and this is the same as the Marking Period the honor roll is run for (see Marking Period above). The Grade Collection can also be the Final Grade collected for the course. There are some honor rolls where you may want to include grades from multiple marking periods. By default, only the Marking Period collection with which the Honor Roll is linked is checked.

• Minimum Credit Load – This specifies the minimum number of attempted credits a student must have in their schedule for the year in order to qualify for this honor roll. The credit total is summed from all courses in the student’s schedule, including courses that are marked “not used in honor roll”. Dropped courses are not included in the total. Courses flagged as “not included in honor roll” apply to the inclusion rules for the honor roll described below – but are part of the student’s total credits for the year.

• Rank – This specifies the rank of the honor roll. Lower numbers mean a higher rank. For example, a rank of 1 is the highest possible rank. The #1 ranked honor roll would be the most restrictive (e.g. the Principal’s Honor Roll). The rank also controls the order in which the honor rolls appear in the list of honor rolls (the list appears in numerical rank order). This is meaningful when you have two or more honor rolls and students who make the higher honor roll should not appear on the lower honor rolls. For example the required average for the High Honor Roll may be 90 or better, while the required average for the Honor Roll may be 80 or better. If the “Student cannot appear on a higher ranked Honor Roll” flag is checked, students will only appear on this honor roll if they



have not qualified for a higher ranked honor roll. (When the “Student cannot appear on a higher ranked Honor Roll” option is checked; the honor rolls are run in sequence order so that students can be properly eliminated from higher ranked honor rolls.)

• Include Students in Grades ‐ These are the grade levels of students that can appear in this Honor Roll. If no grades are selected, no students will appear on the Honor Roll. The list of grades that is shown here are the grades as defined in Setup -> School -> (Parameters) -> Valid Grades.

• Students Active on Date ‐ If this field is left blank, any student that has grades in the marking period of the Honor Roll is eligible. If this field is filled in, then the student must have been active in school on the given date. This date default to the last day of the Marking Period as defined in Setup -> School -> (Parameters) -> Attendance Cycles. The date can also be defined in Grading -> Setup -> Collections -> (Modify Marking Period).

• If a Student receives any comment in this category ______________ ‐ If a student receives a comment that appears in the selected grading comment category; the student is automatically eliminated from the honor roll. This feature looks for a comment in the selected category from any course the student has a grade in; including courses that are marked not used in honor roll. This feature is used if you have a comment code that immediately invalidates the student from being on an honor roll; such as a discipline or attendance issue. This is a general purpose mechanism that allows you to exclude students from honor rolls for a variety of reasons not related to courses taken or grades earned (e.g. behavioral, attendance, too short a time in the school).

• Student cannot appear on a higher ranked Honor Roll – This flag causes the honor rolls to be run in sequence order and for students who appear on higher ranked honor rolls to be excluded from this honor roll. E.g. if there are two honor rolls: High Honor Roll and Honor Roll, and the Honor Roll has this flag set, any student who appears on the High Honor Roll would not also appear on the lower ranked Honor Roll. See Rank for more details about how this feature works.

Honor Role Rules The rules of the Honor Roll decide which students are eligible based on their grades. A default rule is added when you create any new honor roll which states that students must have at least 5 grades (this can be deleted). It is important to note that the following tasks happen before the rules are applied to a student:

• if the student does not have the minimum credit load in his or her schedule; the student is rejected.

• If a “Comment Category” is specified that causes automatic rejection; if the student has a comment code in the specified category; the student is rejected.

The next thing that happens; is the set of grades is determined. The grades that are used in the following rules are only grades from courses with the used in honor roll flag set. If the student is



taking 8 courses; and 6 of those used in honor roll set to Yes, then the only those 6 grades will be selected for analysis by the rules below. Possible Honor Roll Rules

• Must have X grades – The student must have at least the specified number of grades reported for the reporting period.

The student must have at least X grades. The number of grades are grades from courses with the Effects Honor Roll field set to INCLUDED (on the Grades Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades Modify Grade screen). If a student is in 8 courses, but if only 2 of the student's 8 grades have the Effects Honor Roll field set to INCLUDED; then if X was 5; the student would not be included. See Section IV A. “Alpha Grades and Honor Rolls” below for more details.

(on Grades Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades Modify Grade screen:)

• No failing grades – The student cannot have any failing grades for the reporting period.

If the student has any failing grade; this student will be rejected. Failing grades are Alpha Grades that do not have the Passing Grade flag set (on the Grades Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades Modify Grade screen); or numeric grades that fall under the passing grade as defined on the Grades Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades screen.

• Lowest numeric grade – the lowest grade a student can have and still make this honor roll is specified.

If a student has a grade that is lower than the specified unweighted or weighted grade; the student will be rejected.

• Highest numeric grade – The highest numeric grade a student can have is specified.

If a student has a grade that is higher than the specified unweighted or weighted grade; the student will be rejected.



• No less than X of at least this numeric grade – The student must have at least X (e.g. 1, 2, 3…) of the specified numeric grade (or higher).

If a student has fewer than X grades that are of the specified unweighted or weighted grade, they are excluded from this Honor Roll.

• Numeric Average ‐ The student’s average for the period meets the selected criterion (>, >=, <, <=, =) with regard to a particular weighted or unweighted value (e.g. >= 89.5).

A student's unweighted or weighted numeric average must be >, >=, <, <= or = to the value specified. The mathematical comparison operator is selected by the user.

• GPA – The student’s calculated GPA – for the selected GPA – meets the selected criterion (>, >=, <, <=, =) with regard to a particular weighted or unweighted value (e.g. >= 3.5). A student's specified GPA must be >, >=, <, <= or = to the value specified. The mathematical operator is chosen by the user. The GPA that is used is selectable by a drop down list. GPAs are configured on the Grades GPA / Rank Setup screen.

The user selects the GPA to use from the list of existing GPAs:

• Allowable Alpha Grades – Only the listed alpha grades are allowed (e.g. A+,A,A‐). If the student earns any other alpha grade (e.g. B+) they are excluded from this Honor Roll. All acceptable alpha grades must be listed separated by commas. . If a student has an alpha grade that is not one of these; he or she will be rejected. For example: A+, A, A-, B+.

• Allowable Alpha Grade Categories– Only the listed alpha grade categories are allowed (e.g. A+,A,A‐). If the student earns any other alpha grade (e.g. B+) they are excluded from this Honor Roll. All acceptable alpha grades must be listed, separated by commas.



A list of Alpha grades categories separated by commas. If a student has an alpha grade that is not categorized as one of these; he or she will be rejected. For example: A,B. An alpha grade category is a class of Letter Grade such as an A, B, or C. An alpha grade category of A usually refers to an A+, A or A-, an alpha grade category of B usually refers to B+, B, B-. The “alpha grade category” of a grade is defined on the Grades Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades Modify Grade screen. See Section IV A. “Alpha Grades and Honor Rolls” below for more details.

• No more than X of this alpha grade – The student is limited in how many of the specified alpha grade they are allowed to earn and still be included in this Honor Roll. E.g. No more than 1 C+. The “X” value is the count and the “Alpha Grade” is the acceptable grade. The selected alpha grade must be an exact match for the grade the student earns.

• No more than X of this alpha grade category – The student is limited in how many grades in the selected alpha grade category they are allowed to earn and still be included in this Honor Roll. E.g. No more than 1 grade in the category of “C”. The “X” value is the count and the “Alpha Grade Category” is the acceptable category of grades.

• No less than X of this alpha grade – The student is required that they must earn at least a specific number of the selected alpha grade to be included in this Honor Roll. E.g. At least 4 A’s. The “X” value is the count and the “Alpha Grade” is the required grade. The selected alpha grade must be an exact match for the grade the student earns.

• No less than X of this alpha grade category grade – The student is required to earn at least the specified number of grades from those in the selected alpha grade category to be included in this Honor Roll. E.g. At least 5 A’s. The “X” value is the count and the “Alpha Grade Category” is the required category of grades. E.g. if the selected category is “A”, then the student must earn grades in the “A” Category (e.g. A+, A, and A‐).

Honor Roll Rule Sequence Numbers The “Sequence” number of a Rule determines the order in which the Rules will be applied.

Rules are applied in numerical order; lower numbered Rules are applied before higher number Rules. Students are rejected by the first Rule they fail to meet and not tested against additional higher numbered Rules. Students must meet all Rules to be included in the honor roll.



Using the “Core Course Flag” Field to Restrict Honor Roll Rules to Certain Courses

The “Apply this rule only to courses with this Core Course Flag” field can be used to limit the scope of a rule to a specific set of courses – as few as a single course. For example, suppose the criteria for your honor rolls includes a rule that says “Students must earn a 90 or better in Technology”. The Technology course can be placed in its own Core Course category (See Section V below) and a rule added to the Genesis honor roll definition

Procedure to Place a Course in a Separate “Core Course Category” 1. Navigate to the Scheduling Curriculum screen 2. Search for the course you wish to place in its own category 3. Click the edit icon corresponding to that course

4. Update the “Core Course” field with a tag uniquely identifying the course (e.g.

“TECHNO”)

5. Save the change.

Procedure to Create a Rule Restricted to one Core Course Category

• Navigate to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen • Edit the Honor Roll you wish to add the Rule to. • Create the Rule, set the “Apply this rule only to courses with this Core Course Flag” field

to the tag you used to identify the “Core Course”. E.g. TECHNO

• the Rule.

Procedure to Delete a Rule from an Honor Roll

1. Navigate to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen 2. Edit the Honor Roll you wish to remove the Rule from. 3. Locate the Rule you wish to remove:

4. the Rule.



B. Modifying an Honor Roll Grading Honor Rolls User Defined

Procedure to Modify an Honor Roll

1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen. 2. Locate the Honor Roll you wish to modify and click the “Edit” icon:

This brings up the Grading Honor Rolls Modify screen. 3. Modify the information required to describe and define the honor roll (these fields are

described above in Section III A.): • Description • Marking Period • Grade Collections included • Minimum credit load • Rank (of the Honor Roll, not the students) • Include Students in Grades (select grade levels) • Students Active on Date • If a Student receives any comment in this category • Student cannot appear on a higher ranked Honor Roll

4. Click Save to update the Honor Roll definition. 5. Update the Rules that will determine how students are included or excluded.

• To remove an existing Rule, click the corresponding delete icon: • The Create additional Rules. The possible Rules are described above. • When done proceed to testing the Honor Roll (See below).

C. Deleting an Honor Roll

Procedure to Delete an Honor Roll

1. Go to the Grading Honor Rolls User Defined screen.

2. Locate the Honor Roll you wish to delete and click the “Delete” icon: This brings up the confirmation dialog shown below:

3. Click OK to remove the honor roll or click Cancel to abandon the operation.



IV. Defining the Effect of Course Grades on Honor Rolls A. Alpha Grades and Honor Rolls

Grading Setup Alpha Grades Modify Grade

Figure 8 – The Grading Setup Valid Grades Alpha Grades Modify Grade screen

Fields that Affect Honor Roll Calculations Three of the fields on each Alpha Grade affect Honor Roll calculations:

• Category Code – The “category code” of an Alpha grade groups the alpha grades into categories. The Honor Roll rules described in Section III above can apply to Aloha Grade Categories, not merely individual Alpha Grades. Usually the Alpha Grade Categories are set up as follows:

o Category of A: A+,A,A‐ o Category of B: B+, B, B‐ o Category of C: C+,C,C‐ o Category of D: D+,D,D‐ (often D+ and D‐ are omitted from the set of Alpha

Grades). • Passing Grade – This grade is a passing grade if the Passing Grade field is set to Yes. If

the Passing Grade field is set to No then this is a failing grade. • Effects Honor Rolls? ‐

o INCLUDED – This grade is included in Honor Roll calculations and allows the student to be considered for Honor Rolls.

o IGNORED – This grade is not included in Honor Roll calculations but allows the student to be considered for Honor Rolls. Grades of “Passing” or “Withdraw‐Passing” might be flagged as IGNORED, thus ignoring them – but allowing the students to be considered for inclusion in honor rolls based on grades in their other courses.

o RESTRICTED – This grade prevents the student from being considered for Honor Rolls. If a student receives any grade with the Effects Honor Rolls? Field set to RESTRICTED, they are excluded from all Honor Rolls. For example, a grade of “Incomplete” (“Inc”) might be flagged as RESTRICTED, thus preventing students with any Incompletes from being on all honor rolls (at least until the Incomplete is changed).



B. Numeric Grades and Honor Rolls Grading Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades

Figure 9 – The Grading Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades screen

Numeric Grade Fields that Affect Honor Roll Calculations Three of the fields on the Grading Setup Valid Grades Numeric Grades screen affect Honor Roll calculations:

• Minimum Passing Grade – This field indicates the division between passing and failing numeric grades.

• Use Weighted Grade for Min. Passing Grade? – This field simply indicates whether the ‘raw’ unweighted grade or the weighted grade should be used to determine passing or failing.

• Allow Numeric Grades – This flag indicates the type of grading system the school will have. If this flag is set to Yes, the primary grading system for the school will be numeric. If the flag is set to No, only Alpha grades will be accepted.



V. The Effect of Course Definitions on Honor Rolls Scheduling Curriculum School Curriculum Modify Course

Figure 10 – The Course definition includes an “Include in Honor Roll” flag

Course Fields that Affect Honor Roll Calculations The Curriculum file contains the definitions for all courses that are offered in a school. Each course definition includes four fields that can directly or indirectly affect the contribution of the course to honor rolls:

• Include in Honor Roll – This flag directly controls whether the course grade should be considered for honor rolls. If it is unchecked this course will be ignored when evaluating honor roll Rules.

• Core Course – This text field can take a tag which places the course into a “core course category”. Honor Role Rules can be linked to specific core course categories. See Section III A. above. Whatever is placed in the Core Course field (e.g. ‘TECHNO’) will appear in the “Apply this rule only to courses with this Core Course Flag” drop down in the “add a Rule” section of the Grading Honor Rolls Modify screen:

• Include in GPA – This flag can indirectly affect the course’s contribution to honor roll processing. If it is unchecked this course will be ignored when computing GPAs. If it is checked, the course grades will be included in GPA calculations. If an honor roll includes a GPA Rule, the Include in GPA flag will thus have an indirect effect on the honor roll.

• Graded Course – This flag controls whether the course is graded. If a course is not graded, it cannot contribute to honor rolls.

Documents

Grading Administration - Honor Rolls · GRADING ADMINISTRATION: HONOR ROLLS ... Honor roll definitions consist of criteria which define who is ... A lower number means a higher ranking