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Hello -

How can a school/district calculate GPAs when using Standards Based Grades?  It is impossible without using Grade Reporting?  Many teachers also use Gradebook, and I would wish that could align to create a GPA in some fashion.  All Final Marks are set with GPA point values and calculation rules, so it seems that an overall SBG-based GPA shouldn't be impossible, even if it is a lot weirder than a Grade Reporting-based one.  Does anyone know this?  I've been reading all over to find the solution without luck.  

Thanks!

Hi Nick, 

We are also a K-8 district, but we do a letter grade and standards based grades for our 4-8 students.

In order to run our GPA report because we are a standards based grade format, we run a query of the letter grades and generate a pivot table to get the average of the 4 core subjects. You can not run it in the grade reporting screen because the data is not there.

Thanks!  I've been thinking of doing the same thing as a workaround.  Is there any easy way to re-import that calculated GPA back into Aeries somewhere so it can become a part of the student's record for term-to-term comparisons?

We haven't put it back into aeries. We keep a google drive sheet with the information so we can compare semester to semester.

Good Luck!

Can you share the query you run?

Here is what we used last, it seems to change a bit every year though, so it may not work for you.

We won't run ours until the Semester ends in January, since I can't pull the data that isn't there yet.

I've included the instructions we give to the secretaries to convert the info.

LIST STU TCH SBG STN STU.FN STU.LN STU.ID STU.GR TCH.TE SBG.MT SBG.M1 SBG.SD STN.TI IF SBG.MT = 1

GPA Calculation Steps

Now that you have all of your data in the excel document you will need to do some data clean up.

FIRST – THIS IS A NEW STEP! – Filter your standard ID column and delete all you don’t need, you will need to watch for the Standards labeled “HCP”, but this will pull the other classes.

I could not get the query to remove the “non core” standards.

1. Copy the Mark1 column into a blank column and name it MarkValue

2. Highlight the MarkValue Column and using the Find & Select dropdown, choose “replace” and  change all A+ to a 4 or all A- to a 4 and all A = 4; all B+ = 3 all B- = 3 and all B = 3; all C+ = 2 all C- = 2 all C = 2; all D+ =  1 all D- = 1 all D = 1; all F = 0

Next you will place this information in to a Pivot Table which will calculate your GPA’s for you.

   Highlight all of the data by clicking on the triangle in the upper left corner of the page.

  Select the Insert Tab on the top line and click on Pivot Table.  A dialogue box will pop up.  Leave the default choices as they appear for the items:  Select a table or range and New Worksheet.

  A Pivot Table Field List will display on the right hand side of the screen.  You will drag and drop fields from this list into the following areas:

  Report Filter – Teacher name

  Report Filter – Grade

  Column Labels – MKType  (Mark 1/2/3)

  Row Labels – Student Name

  Values – MarkValue

  Change the default setting of “count” to “Average” by clicking on the item and selecting “average” from the drop down and click on the Number Format and change to limit to 2 decimal points. 

f.  Illustrate how to limit the lists by Teacher name and then cut and paste data into a document for sharing.  

I revised our process as well since I posted this.  I learned that the SCSC and CRSC CALPADS files weren't generating without the Grade reporting (GRD/GRC/GRH/HIS etc) tables populated.  We're a K-8 elementary school, so technically CALPADS says we can skip those files, but I didn't like seeing the errors and teachers wanted GPA anyway, so....

I began to use this fairly lengthly process to copy SBG marks over to GRD by hand.  I mass-add marks by course and student grade level to GRD, then use a series of queries to copy over the marks from SBG, finally I use the GRD update procedures to update Grade History and Transcripts, etc.  It's really only viable because I'm looking at only about 24-30 courses and twice that many sections with one relevant mark each...I pretty much have to run 2-3 steps per course, which is a bunch of Query copy-pasting for the most part.  

Example steps for an 8th grade ELA class:  

1.  Mass Add Student Related Data to table GRD with PD = 2, CN = 028, TN = 405, CR = 12 (Limit by grade = 8, include inactive students)

2.  See the records before change:  

LIST STU SEC CRS GRD SBG STU.NM CRS.CO SBG.SD GRD.CN SBG.M1 GRD.M2 IF SBG.SD = 02000 AND SBG.MT = 1 AND GRD.CN = 028 AND SEC.CN = 028 AND GRD.SN = STU.SN

3.  Change it:  

CHANGE STU GRD SBG GRD.M2 TO SBG.M1 IF SBG.SD = 02000 AND SBG.MT = 1 AND GRD.CN = 028 AND GRD.SN = STU.SN AND SBG.SN = STU.SN

You can see my process steps in a Google sheet here - teacher names are included but no student-identifying information.  I'm sure someone who's a SQL whiz could automate the whole thing, since it's all within Aeries with nothing being dumped out for hand-processing.  I only use the spreadsheet to help me compile all of my queries and keep track of the steps.  

I'm not great with Query codes, can someone give me the query code to run a gpa list for the 8th graders?

Hi Vilma, 

Did you try the query I input?  If that's not working, you can give me a call and I can try to walk you through it.

916-652-1811 ex 105.

:)

Thank you for replying so quickly! I just got the query from my Tech department. Thanks again!