Start/End Grading Period Processes

Overview

This article presents an overview of the grade-related processes that should be completed at the end of a grading period and start of a new grading period.

Before Report Cards Are Printed/Published

• Post and lock all grades using the “Post/Lock Grades” procedure from the Action menu on the System homepage in Axiom.

Learn more about posting and locking grades.

To Publish Report Cards to the Portals

Go to the Grading Periods report on the System homepage. Within the green section titled “Portals Display,” check off “Publish Report Cards” for the grading period that you’d like to publish them.

Be sure to hide the report cards during the times when grades and classes are still being worked on, or else you risk information being available to people before it is ready. You can read more about hiding information in the portals here.

After Report Cards Are Printed/Published

The Active Grading Period Parameter controls the following:

1. The grading period for the documents on the Documents homepage
2. The default grading period in the Gradebook
3. Grade records are created in the overnight process when a new Grading Period becomes active. This also controls the PTD average in the Gradebook (a grading period average cannot be calculated until the grading period grade records are created).  *NOTE: If you change the Active Grading Period during the day, grade records will not be created until the overnight process. This means teachers will not see a PTD grade in the gradebook until the day after you change the Active Grading Period.

To modify what Grading Period is active, follow the below procedure.

1. Change the “Active Grading Period” to be current (this does not happen automatically). To change active grading periods in Axiom, navigate to the System homepage → System → System Configuration → “Active Grading Periods” link.
2. Open the “Grading Periods” report on the system homepage and adjust the “Display” and “Open for Grading” flags as needed for the Report Card Form (the Grades tab on the teacher portal where teachers enter report card grades for their classes):
   1. Uncheck “Open for Grading” on the previous grading period
   2. Check “Display” on the new grading period

Timeline at the End of a Grading Period

The following timeline outlines the general grade-related process for schools as grading periods end. Note that individual schools might have a different set of steps and deadline.

Day 0: End of the Grading Period

At the end of the grading period, teachers should have a deadline for having all assignment grades entered in the gradebook. We recommend giving teachers a deadline of three days after the grading period has ended to have all assignment grades finalized for their classes. It is important that all assignment grades have been entered prior to posting so the calculated grade that gets posted is up-to-date.

+3 Days: Post Grades

Once teachers have all of their assignment grades entered, grades can be posted. We recommend posting grades three days after the grading period has ended. There are two options for posting grades:

1. have an administrator perform a posting action, or
2. have teachers post their own grades.

Administrator Posting in Batch

An administrator can batch-post grades, which pulls from the gradebook calculated grade in the Teacher Portal. Review how to Post Grades.

Teachers Posting Their Own Grades

To allow teachers to post their grades, the report card form configuration for their classes must be configured to allow entry of posted grades and the proper grading periods marked “open for grading.” If teachers post their own grades, no batch posting actions are needed. Read more about report card configuration.

+3 Days: Teachers Override Grades

If your school posts grades administratively in batch, teachers can be allowed to review and override the posted grade. Sometimes schools want to allow this if, for example, there is a student whose calculated grade is on the edge of a grade and they want to bump it up for hard work (e.g. from a B+ to an A-). Enable this option by enabling posted grades on the report card form and opening the grading period for grading. We recommend giving teachers a relatively small window (e.g., three days) for overriding grades.

+6 Days: Grade Review & Additional Posting

At this point in the process, it is important to review the status of all grades to make sure no grades have gotten missed in the process and that no teachers have added assignment grades which may have changed a student’s grade. Typically schools have teachers and/or division heads reviewing grades in some way, but it is important for an administrator to also review grades.

To review the status of all grades, run the Posting/Locking Status report on the System homepage to see if there are any grades that remain unposted. If there are records un-posted because they do not have a calculated grade, double check to be sure these classes do not give grades.

To make sure there are no grade discrepancies, run the Posted/Calculated Grade Discrepancies query on the Data Integrity homepage. This report will show any posted grades that do not match the calculated grade for a student and what the difference is. Note: if your school allows teachers to override grades, this report may show some valid discrepancies.

If additional grades need to be posted or grades need to be re-posted, perform an additional posting action as necessary. For example, if a teacher put in grades late and you need to re-post a particular class to override the grades that were previously posted, perform a posting action with a filter on that class only and an action of “Clear and Re-Post all unlocked grades.”

Review how to post grades for specifics on posting grades.

+10 Days: Lock Grades

Once all grades have been reviewed, corrected and posted, perform a locking action to ensure no further changes can be made. To lock all grades in batch, perform a locking action with the “Post/Lock Numeric Grades” procedure on the school level homepage Action menus. Locking will lock all records that contain a posted grade, a status, a proficiency level, or a comment. Empty grade records will remain unlocked. Once grades are locked, this prevents teachers from making any changes in the Gradebook and Report Card Form.

Review the how to lock grades documentation to learn how to perform a posting action.

As locking actions are performed, use the “Posting/Locking Status” query on the System homepage to track the progress of which grades have been locked in each school level.

+10 Days: Make Changes after Locking

If a grade needs to be changed after it has been locked, the Locked flag can be unchecked on an individual grade record in Axiom to allow to update to the grade. After the correction is made, be sure to re-lock the record.

+10 Days: Publish Report Cards

Once all grades are posted and locked, it is time to publish report cards. This can be done on the grading periods configuration query on the System homepage by checking Publish Report Cards for the proper grading period(s).

If this is your school’s first time publishing Report Cards or Progress reports, or if your school has made any changes to your report card or progress reports and this is the first time publishing since those changes, you may need to first review the “Grade Levels” report on the System homepage, and verify that Report Cards and Progress Reports are enabled for the correct Grade Levels.

At this time grades can also be posted to transcripts as needed. Read more about posting to transcripts. If any grade changes need to be made after posting to transcripts, both the Report Card Grade and the Transcript Item will need to be updated.

Example: Posting Seniors or Eighth Graders Only

Sometimes it is necessary to post the grades for seniors (US) or 8th graders (MS) before you post the grades for the rest of the school. To do this, perform a posting action with a filter by grade level for the appropriate grading period and subsequent details (outlined above) based on your grading period setup. Once the grades are posted, be sure to lock these grade records to avoid subsequent changes. Once the senior/eighth grades have been locked, then a posting action has been performed for the remainder of the school level, the senior/eighth grade records will remain untouched.

NOTE: Some schools have mixed grade classes (with seniors and juniors together for example). If there are seniors in the mixed class with locked grades, then you will not be able to add additional class assignments for the grading period in question. If additional assignments need to be added for the juniors in a particular class, you can manually unlock grades for the seniors in that class and then add the appropriate assignments. MAKE SURE to manually re-lock grades for the seniors in the mixed grade classes prior to posting and locking for the rest of the students in that school level.