Attendance Credit Loss Overview

Modified on Tue, Nov 11 at 10:41 AM

CONTENTS

Overview
Attendance Credit Loss Options
Automatic Attendance Credit Loss Rules
Restoring Loss of Credit

Overview

It is possible for Genesis to automatically apply credit loss records for courses with excessive absences/tardies. This article reviews how to setup automatic and/or manual credit loss from the Grading >Setup > Att. Credit Loss screen.

With this mechanism, schools specify how many absences will cause a student to receive an adjustment to earned/attempted credits for a course due to reaching a specific number of absences. The system can also 'convert' a specific number of class tardiness into an absence for calculating this total.

Either Daily Attendance or Class Attendance can be analyzed in order to determine whether a student qualifies for any of the attendance credit loss rules. These rules are created at the bottom of the Grading > Setup> Att. Credit Loss screen.

Automatic Attendance Credit Loss is enabled by creating “Credit Loss Rules”. If there are rules in place, it can be disabled by checking off Disable Attendance Credit Loss option.

Attendance Credit Loss Options

These are your options for configuring automatic and/or manual credit loss:

Automatic Attendance Credit Settings

Option	Notes
Disable Attendance Credit Loss	Automatic Attendance Credit Loss calculations will no longer occur when the feature is disabled
Exclude students from credit loss with an IEP Graduation Attendance of	Takes students with this IEP field set to a specific value, and excludes them from automatic credit loss
Attendance Type	Class: 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. Daily: This will analyze the student's DAILY attendance for the number of unexcused absences/tardies. The credit loss rules will control which course(s) are impacted when a certain Daily attendance is reached. For example, if the rule is "5 absences - Full Year courses" then when the student reached 5 daily attendance absences, their Full Year courses will all get credit loss applied.
Convert this many tardies to 1 absence	For the purpose of determining qualifying students, Genesis can calculate a total number of absences, with the inclusion of total absences based on tardies to class. Ex: If entering "3" and a student has 3 tardy + 4 absences, they will qualify for a "5 absence" rule. Note: Any credit loss rules using the Use Credit Loss Value option will NOT analyze tardies that were converted using this option,

Manual entry of Credit Loss by Teachers

Option	Notes
Allow Teachers to Post Credit Loss	Whether teachers are allowed to post attendance totals when Grade Posting is open
Default Reason Code	Default 'Credit Reason' code when teachers post the Attendance Credit Loss to students.
Allow Teacher to Change the Reason Code	Whether teachers are allowed to update this reason to something else or if a specific reason code must always be used.

Automatic Attendance Credit Loss Rules

To add a new rule, go to the Grading > Setup > Att. Credit Loss screen and click the Add New Rule button.

This brings up the Add Credit Loss Rule dialog:

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.

Option	Notes
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. Note: You should not indicate "Tardies" if you are using the "Convert this many tardies to absence" option.
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. See Class Attendance Codes for where this Credit Loss Value option is found. Note: If using this option, the system will completely ignore the "Convert this many tardies to 1 absence" option for this rule, as the conversion occurs when totaling the Credit Loss Value field. For example, instead of converting "4" tardy to "1" absence, the Credit Loss Value on the Tardy code could be "0.25"
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's credit loss record. This will appear in the student’s Grades tab and optionally on the report card or transcript 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 to the qualifying course. If the checkbox is not checked, Rule processing continues even if the checked Rule is applied.

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.

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”

Restoring Loss of Credit

Credit is restored automatically by the system once the student's attendance is corrected and they no longer reach the threshold for credit loss. When you correct a student's attendance (daily or class) the credit loss record will be removed from the qualifying course(s).

However, you do have a few options if you need to manually remove or adjust a credit loss record. One way is to manually delete the credit loss 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 manually 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 manually restore/adjust credit

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 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: