It’s that time of year where you’re scrambling to send parents / students some information about their academic performance. In many cases, you can send home a report card via our Report Cards module. But if you’re looking for something quick and easy, you could optionally send a snapshot of the Gradebook, and use that as a Progress Report in QuickSchools.

Here’s how it works:

What is in the Progress Report

If enabled, Students and Parents can actually access grades from the Gradebook directly from their portal. 

• Only published and public information is available. So unpublished/hidden columns and subjects are invisible, as well as any Private Comments
• If your gradebook has a published formula, the system will display a running calculation for that formula

Emailing Progress Reports

As an administrator, you can bulk email the current Progress Reports from the Gradebooks, from the main Students Listing. Simply select the students via the check boxes on the left, and select “Bulk Email Gradebook” from the table menu:

You will be asked to confirm the action:

Customizing the Progress Reports

Right now, all schools use the same template by default. But our PDF templating engine does allow for customization, similar to the Report Cards. If you’d like to customize your Gradebook PDFs, please contact our support staff. A customization fee may be applicable.

Hidden / Beta Features

There is a little known hidden feature that allows schools to completely hide subjects from the Gradebook, and consequently from the Gradebook PDF as well. This is useful if you’re not using the Gradebook for certain non-graded subjects. Please contact our support team, if you’re interested in this feature.

Alternatives to the Gradebook PDF

As mentioned previously, the Report Cards module is still an excellent module for producing Progress Reports, since progress reports that are generated in the Report Cards module are stored separately under the “Reports” tab of the student record.

The Gradebook PDF is always generated in real-time. So producing a Gradebook PDF today may be different from producing it 2 weeks from now. So in comparison, versions of the Progress Reports generated from the Gradebook are never stored on the student record.

On the flip side, Gradebook PDFs can be generated / emailed at any time, without having to create or lock a session. You don’t even have to engage the teachers to enter comments, since public comments from the Gradebook are automatically included.

If you have more questions about using the Gradebook to generate Progress Reports, please chat with us online. We’d love to hear from you.