Attendance Credit Loss Overview

Modified on Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 4:46 PM

Attendance Credit Loss

New - 2.0.5032 installed 6/19/18 2:03AM

Added checkbox "Disable Attendance Credit Loss:". This will prevent Genesis from automatically calculating credit loss. No records will be added or removed until unchecked. This will reset upon rollover.

It is possible to configure Genesis to automatically enforce credit loss for excessive absences from Grading>Setup>Att. Credit Loss.

With this mechanism, schools specify how many absences will cause a student to be denied credit for a course because they have been absent an excessive number of times.

Either Daily Attendance or Class Attendance can be used to enforce the credit loss.

Attendance Credit Loss is enabled by creating “Credit Loss Rules”.

These rules are created on the bottom of the Grading>Setup>Att. Credit Loss screen.

Rules are specified to semester code and attendance cycle:

Each course section has a semester code that specifies when (during which Marking Periods/Semesters) the course is taught. E.g. FY = Full Year, S1 = Semester 1, Q4 = Quarter 4 (Marking Period 4).
Rules specify the semester code of the courses the Rule applies to. A course with semester code of “Q4” applies only to course sections with the same semester code.
Rules additionally specify the attendance cycle they apply to. Thus different Credit Loss Rules can apply to the same course during different attendance cycles. What does this mean? It means, for example, that a Full Year course (semester code = FY), can have one Credit Loss Rule apply to it for Semester 1 (attendance cycle = S1) and for Semester 2 (attendance cycle = S2). A five credit course can earn or lose 2.5 credits for Semester 1 and earn or lose 2.5 credits for Semester 2.
Rules also specify the “Reason Code” for the credit loss.

Attendance Credit Loss Setup Params

Manual entry of credit loss by teachers

Allow Teachers to Post Credit Loss	Whether teachers are allowed to post attendance totals during Grade Posting
Default Reason Code	What reason to supply for Attendance Credit Loss
Allow Teacher to Change the Reason Code	Whether teachers are allowed to update this reason (i.e. change it) or whether the reason code is fixed
Disable Attendance Credit Loss	This will prevent Genesis from automatically calculating credit loss. No records will be added or removed until unchecked. This will reset upon rollover.

Options used to determine number of absences during processing of automatic attendance credit loss rules

Attendance Type

Whether to use Daily Attendance or Class Attendance to determine credit loss. If using "Class" the system will calculate credit loss rules based on each course's unexcused absence total (or credit loss abs. total), and credit loss is only applied to qualifying courses. If this is set with "Daily" then the system will analyze the student's DAILY attendance for the number of unexcused absences. In the below example of an automatic credit loss rule, the "courses" is indicating 'any course with 5.00 credits' and Attendance Cycle is set to 'FY' (full year), and absences=11. If your ATC is set to 'Daily' with this example, as long as the student had 11 unexcused absences (for daily attendance) to school (any time during the full year), an 'Attendance Failure' gets automatically applied, specifically to all of their courses with exactly 5 credits.

In order to convert tardies into absences you may either use the value set directly below -OR- select "Use Credit Loss Value" in the individual RULES you create from this screen. Rules set with "Use Credit Loss" will use the Credit Loss value set on individual Unexcused Absence and Unexcused Tardy Class Attendance codes when counting up absences to determine credit loss.

Convert this many tardies to 1 absence

Whether or not to convert multiple tardies to a single absence

Automatic Attendance Credit Loss Rules Params

Example: The rule above matches Full Year courses where students have 8.2 or more absences for the entire year. The earned credits are set to zero. The student loses credit for the entire course and receives a ‘reason code’ of “Attendance Loss - Full Year”

SEQ	Controls the order in which the Rules will be applied
Code	You make this up to indicate a “name” for the Rule.
Courses	The Credits or Semester Code for the courses to which the Rule applies. E.g. A code of “FY” applies to ‘full year’ courses. “5.0 credits” applies to courses that are worth 5.0 credits.
In Att. Cycle	The applicable Attendance Cycle.
When There Are	The number of absences or tardies that will trigger the Rule. You must specify the number of events and whether they are absences or tardies. You cannot specify both in the same Rule.
Use Credit Loss Value	Rules set with "Use Credit Loss" will use the Credit Loss value set on individual Unexcused Absence and Unexcused Tardy Class Attendance codes when counting up absences to determine credit loss.
Count Attendance	Count number of attendance transactions rather than summing the attendance value from transaction. For example, a half day (.5) absence would be a Count of 1 but a Sum of .5. Selecting the “Count Attendance” option counts each ‘transaction’ as one when computing the attendance credit loss value.
Set Reason Code To	The “Reason Code” that will be applied to the course. This will appear in the student’s record and possibly on the report card to indicate why the student lost credit. The reasons are district-defined, and the list of codes can be edited via Setup > Codes
Action(s)	Separate actions can be specified for “attempted” credits and “earned” credits. When an action is selected, a text field appears to allow you to enter the “set to” or “multiply by” values. You may specify an action for either or both “Attempted Credits” and “Earned Credits” Set attempted credits to – You must also specify the number of “attempted credits”. Multiply attempted credits by - You must also specify the multiplier for the original # of “attempted credits” Set earned credits to – You must also specify the number of “earned credits”. Multiply earned credits by- You must also specify the multiplier for the original # of “earned credits”
Stop	If this checkbox is checked, then if the Rule is executed, no additional Rules are applied. If the checkbox is not checked, Rule processing continues even if the checked Rule is applied.

Notes:

All attendance values are unexcused.
If any changes are made to the attendance setup; you should re-recalculate all grades on the Grading -> GPA / Rank -> Maintenance screen.

Adding an Attendance Credit Loss Rule

To add a new rule, go to the Grading→Setup→Att. Credit Loss screen and click the button. This brings up the

"Add Attendance Credit Loss Rule" dialog:

Fill in fields:

Sequence # - This is the order in which the Rules will be found and used. Order is important and may affect the outcome for students.
Code - Make up a code for this Rule - This is just an identifier and it only has to be unique. It does not do anything else.
Courses - Specify the # of credits or the semester code (e.g. FY, S1, S2, Q1...) for the courses to which this rule will apply. This picks which courses are examined for this rule.
In Att. Cycle - This is the part of the year in which the Attendance Loss Credit Rule will apply. For example, if the number of absences 'resets' every semester, you will need two separate rules: one for S1 and another for S2.
When there are - Specify how many of what kind of Attendance 'event' will trigger the rule. This is the "trigger" that makes the rule apply to a student. Options are Absences and Tardies
Loss Value - Uses the "Credit Loss Value" instead of the "Absence Value" on Class Attendance Codes.
Attendance - Absences can be counted or the "Absence Value" of Attendance Codes summed up. Checking this check box uses the "count absences" mechanism for the rule. Leaving it unchecked uses the summing method.
Set Reason Code to - If credit is lost, the selected Reason is displayed.
Actions - Up to 4 possible actions when the Rule is to be applied.
Stop checkbox - The set of rules is like a little program - each is applied until a "Stop" checkbox is found to be checked on a rule that has been 'triggered'. Otherwise additional rules are examined.

Restoring Loss of Credit

Credit is not restored automatically. For example, if a student's attendance is corrected, the credit loss record will still remain. Credit restore can be done in one of the following ways. One way is to delete the credit adjustment record. The other way is to 'track' the restore of credit, by updating the credit adjustment record to have a positive credit value.

How to delete a credit loss record

Visit the student's Grades tab. The courses that have a credit adjustment record will show the code of the credit loss reason (ex: 'AF') to the right of the course's grades:

Notice how this course has "0" for Earned Credits. The other courses do not have Earned Credits because they have not received a Final Grade yet. The credit loss record forces the earned credit to be a specific value.

To edit the credit adjustment record, click the pen and paper icon next to the reason code (shown above) which will take you to the following screen:

To remove any record of the credit loss taking place, simply make all of the above fields blank, then click Accept.

How to restore credit

This method can be used if the student can make-up their credit loss due to attendance for any reason. Visit the student's Grades tab. The courses that have a credit adjustment record will show the code of the credit loss reason (ex: 'AF') to the right of the course's grades:

To edit the credit adjustment record, click the pen and paper icon next to the reason code (shown above) which will take you to the following screen:

To restore credit, you can update the student's Attempted Credits and/or Earned Credits (depending on what was changed by the automatic credit loss functions) to have a positive credit value. In addition, the Reason can be updated to something other than "Attendance Failure" or "Credit Loss" - for this purpose, the district should create an additional credit adjustment reason (Setup>Codes) to account for credits being restored.

Click Accept to finish.

This method can be used to track that a student's credit has been restored. The student Grades tab will show the new credit adjustment information and reason code: