Overview
The GPA and Class Rank records are stored in a year specific table in the database in Focus. Thus, the GPA you see in Focus is specific to the year you are in at the top of Focus. When you switch over to a new year in Focus there will be no GPAs or Class Ranks assigned yet for your secondary students so you must run the GPA calculation to assign a GPAs and Class Rank in the new year.
To calculate GPA manually, go to Grades > Calculate GPA. Select the School(s) for which to calculate GPA, Select Course History from the Making Period pull-down menu and choose the appropriate GPA to base class rank on. If school has not started yet, select Custom Date and choose the first day of school for your district, then click the Calculate GPAs and Class Ranks button
Automatic GPA & Class Rank Calculation
System Preference: Calculate GPA Automatically
If your district has enabled the system preference Calculate GPA Automatically, anytime you make a grade change directly on the course history or view a student's final grades page the GPA will be updated.
Note: This will not update class rank.
Scheduled Job: Calculate Class Rank and GPA
FOCUS also provides an optional scheduled job titled Calculate Class Rank and GPA. At a minimum, it is recommended that this job be scheduled to automatically recalculate GPAs nightly as a failsafe in case the individual student calculation does not complete successfully. The scheduled job can be configured to either update both GPA and Class Rank or GPA only by selecting the Do Not Update Class Rank option.
Some districts choose to update Class Rank only at specific times during the school year in order to preserve the official rankings used to identify the Valedictorian and Salutatorian. If Class Rank is configured to recalculate nightly, a student's ranking could change after the Valedictorian has been announced but before graduation.
When the Do Not Update Class Rank option is selected, the scheduled job will continue to recalculate GPAs nightly while leaving Class Rank unchanged until your district is ready to perform an official rank calculation manually.
The student's Course History screen displays the effective date of the most recent GPA calculation as well as the most recent Class Rank calculation, allowing you to verify when each was last updated.
Note: This job should be scheduled to end on the last day of attendance for seniors to avoid recalculating with an effective date that is outside of their enrollment.
GPA
Calculation Formula
The basic cumulative GPA calculation in Focus is:
Sum Total of (GPA Points * Credits Earned) / Sum total of Credits Attempted
Affects GPA Flag and Excluded
The checkbox labeled Affects GPA determines if the course is included in the GPA calculation. Even if Affects GPA is OFF it will still add the credits attempted to the total credits attempted for the student.
Letter grades marked on the grading scale as Excluded are not included in the GPA calculation either, even if affects gpa is checked. The excluded letter grades are not included in the total credits attempted.
Prior Year GPAs and Calculating GPA
The GPA you see at the top of the Final Grades, Course History page in Focus is the student’s most recent cumulative GPA for this year. If you wish to review the GPAs from a prior year, you must first select that year in the top pull-down in Focus. If a student is not active in the current year, you will need to go back to their last year of enrollment in order to view their GPA.
The GPA records are stored in a year specific file in the database in Focus. Thus, at the beginning of each new school year you must run calculate GPAs as there will not be any GPA records yet for the new year.
When you run the Course History GPA you should always check weight GPA by credits.
Weighted GPAs
Weighted GPAs are how schools are able to assign bonus points for students taking more rigorous classes. Each district defines weighted GPAs differently, and some may not use weighted GPAs at all. In order to use weighted GPAs in Focus, your MIS manager must enable them in system preferences and then weighted GPA scales must setup under Grades > Grading Scales & Comments.
Note: when setting up grading scales it’s important to assign GPA points and Weighted GPA points regardless of whether the grading scale is for weighted or unweighted. This is because all grades in course history impact both the weighted and unweighted GPA.
For more information, please review our Grading Setup documentation for MIS Staff.
Class Rank
Incoming 9th Graders
Note: at the beginning of the school year there are likely many 9th graders who will not be assigned a GPA or class rank if they have never completed any HS level course work. Because they do not have any grades with credits + gpa points in course history Focus cannot yet assign them a GPA or Class Ranking. This will also result in the total in the denominator to be less than the total number of students for the school. Once teachers post Semester 1 grades they should all have at least one class in course history and then they will be ranked.
Include in Class Rank
Focus calculates Class Rank based on who has Include in Class Rank marked Yes on their enrollment line for the year. If a student is not marked to include in class rank or does not have any high school level course work in course history then they will not be assigned a rank and will not be included in the Class Rank denominator.
Early Graduates
Including early graduates in Class Ranking is a requirement in Florida. See page 10: https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5421/urlt/FCFFEH.pdf
In order to accomplish this in Focus, these System Preferences must be checked:
- System Preferences > Grading > Partition Class Rank by = Gradelevel
- System Preferences > Grading > Include Early Graduates in Class Rank = Checked