Scales and Symbols

Grade Scales and Symbols allow you to manage grading scales and scoring symbols used in assignment, term, and yearly grading and reports based on those grades. HomeSchool Minder can adapt to any popular grading style in use today including Pass-Fail, the quality index (A-F), and the chromatic quality index (A+ to F-).

The Grade Scales and Symbols configuration may be found by selecting the Settings button in the top application bar and navigating to Scales & Symbols under Grading Settings on the right-hand menu.

Grade Scales

Grade Scales allow you to map letter grades to assignment percentage scores and GPA values. We do this by creating a lower limit for each letter grade in a scale. Let's say that we've created the symbol A+ and mapped it to a lower limit of 95.0 with a GPA of 4.00. If we've given an assignment 24 points out of 25 possible, the percentage score would be 96%. Using this grade scale, the assignment would be given the A+ grade. If the student had ended up scoring 96% in the course itself and we used the same grade scale for the course, they would have received an A+.

You can create a Grade Scale by clicking on the green add button and entering its name. The Default option will make this grade scale the default selection for any new course registration you create. Save the grade scale and it will appear at the bottom of the list.

To add a grade symbol to the scale, click the green add button on the right of the its row and an entry dialog will appear. Here we could start with the Symbol A, a Lower Limit of 90, and a GPA Value of 4.0.

Please ensure that you always enter an absolute lower limit for the worst possible grade to catch anything your previous lower limits didn't. You should almost always have an entry with a lower limit of 0!

Score Symbols

Score Symbols are simply grading shortcuts you can assign in lieu of entering a points scored for an assignment. These additional options are effectively pre-calculated percentage values for assignments. Suppose you have a simple homework assignment that you wish to give a 50% grade for partially completing. If the points possible on that assignment were 10 points, you could simply enter 5 as the score of the assignment. Or you might use a score symbol with a score of 50(%) in its place.

Creating a score symbol may be done below the grade scales and works similiarly:

As many symbols may be created as needed. They are here for your convenience.

Grading with Scales and Symbols

Assignments may be graded quickly and easily through the gradebook. Every assignment will display its possible points, score, and grade. The points possible is the total number of points an assignment is worth relative to all other assignments in that category for a course. To score an assignment, click in the score column for that record, type in the number of points which have been scored, and press Enter.

You may also grade an assignment by using one of your predefined scoring symbols. You may do this by selecting the dropdown arrow in the score entry.

Once the score has been entered, the gradebook will automatically update with the corresponding letter grade for the assignment based on the percentage calculated by dividing the scored points by the points possible. These letter grades are determined from the Grade Scale you selected for the assignment.

Reports

Your grading reports, such as the Transcript, will use these grade scales to determine the letter grade and credits to display.

In the case of the Transcript, the weighted averages of all assignments are averaged together for term grades and the weighted term grades are averaged together for the yearly percentage grade. This yearly percentage grade is then translated into a (Letter) Grade and Credits Earned (GPA Value).