In My Markbook2, we've designed the grade book to accommodate various grading needs while ensuring clarity and accuracy in student performance tracking. It's important to understand how numeric values, including special markers for absences, affect overall grades and report cards. Here's a detailed explanation:
Numeric Values and Absences
- Numeric Entries: The grade book cells accept only numeric values to record student scores on assessments. This approach ensures consistency and ease of calculation for averages and final grades.
- Recording Absences:
- Unexcused Absences: To mark an unexcused absence, teachers should enter -1 (negative one). This signals an absence that impacts the student's average as if they received a zero. The choice of -1 rather than 0 is deliberate, to distinguish between an actual score of zero earned through assessment and an absence.
- Excused Absences: For excused absences, teachers should leave the cell blank. This ensures that the absence does not negatively affect the student's average, acknowledging the validity of the excuse.
Special Note on Zero Scores:
It's important that teachers do not enter a 0 for absences. Zero should be reserved for cases where a student has participated but earned no points, ensuring a clear distinction in the grade book between earned scores and absences.
Adjusting for Absence Penalties:
Our system offers flexibility to accommodate different school policies regarding absences:
- Schools can activate a setting that ignores the 'zero effect' of an unexcused absence (-1). This feature allows schools that do not penalize absences in their grading policy to accurately reflect their approach in the grade book.
Grade Categories and Averages:
- The grade book organizes assessments into categories as required by the school, such as "Term Grade" and "Exam Grade."
- If a student has unexcused absences (-1) for all assessments in a category (e.g., all 6 term grade assessments), their average for that category would be 0, reflecting the absence's impact on their grade.
Report Card Summaries:
- The report card provides a summary of grades by category. It is designed to interpret an absence (recorded as -1 in the grade book) not as a negative value but as an absence. Therefore, while the grade book uses -1 to impact averages for unexcused absences, the report card ensures that the overall presentation of grades is coherent and reflective of actual student performance and attendance.
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