Category Weights and PowerSchool

[avanzile]

We are new to Canvas and are trying to figure out why things are not passing over to Powerschool correctly.  A teacher has quizzes weighted as 20% of the overall grade, but "quizzes" does not show up as a category in Canvas when in the Grades settings.  It only shows Assignments and Imported Assignments.  How does one create categories?  Without setting up weights in Canvas, the scores go in as points but then are not weighted correctly.  Does anyone know how to address this issue?  I suspect it will become a common one as most teachers at my school weight different categories differently.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello  @avanzile ​...

I don't have an answer to your question, but I wanted to let you know that I am going to share your question with the Grade Pass Back group here in the Canvas Community.  If you are not following that group, you might want to do so by visiting the link that I've included and then clicking the "Follow" button at the top right corner of that page.  Hopefully, sharing your question with this group will get it some additional visibility here in the Community.  Good luck!

[avanzile]

Anna Van Zile

Fairbanks Middle School Principal

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @avanzile ​, I will preface my remarks by saying that I haven't used the PowerSchool grade integration. However, from this part of your description:

A teacher has quizzes weighted as 20% of the overall grade, but "quizzes" does not show up as a category in Canvas when in the Grades settings.  It only shows Assignments and Imported Assignments.

I wonder if this is a course that has been copied over from a previous semester and/or imported from a different learning management system. If that's the case, then the assignments must first be reconfigured into assignment groups (which would be the equivalent of Categories), and that is not done in the Grades tab, but in the Assignments tab. For a description of how to organize assignments into assignment groups, please refer to How do I add an Assignment Group in a course? and How do I weight the final course grade based on Assignment Groups? .

After your teacher creates the assignment groups, and weights them according to her preferred grading scheme, she can drag and drop the assignments out of the "Assignments" and "Imported Assignments" groups in which they currently reside into the new groups she has created (and ideally, she can then delete the unneeded, now-empty, assignment groups). This assignment group arrangement will populate the Gradebook, where she will then see assignment group (or category) columns.

I leave it to a PowerSchool expert to determine whether this will help solve the dilemma you and your teachers are facing, but I know that following these steps will allow the grades to display correctly in Canvas--and that is a necessary first step.

[avanzile]

Now, that makes sense! I will pass you suggestion on and see if it works.

Sent from Anna's iPhone...

[hbradford]

Stephanie is correct! You must first set up assignment groups that match your PowerSchool Categories.  The two must have the exact same titles.  You must also be on Version 9.1 or higher of PowerSchool in order for the categories to pass back. Try that and let us know if you still have questions!