TechKNOW Notes—from your building Technology Committee   

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IntegradePro Tip: Rounding grades

The technology committee recommends that teachers set the grade table without decimal places, and set the number of decimals to be displayed (in the student percentage) to 0. These settings will make gradebooks across the school more consistent and should minimize complaints from students and parents. Here’s why.

Whether or not IGPro rounds up when determining the grade depends on how your grading table is set up. If the grading table is set up with the lower limits as (for example) 90-80-70-60 (with no decimal places), IGPro will round. For example, a student with 79.5 (but not 79.49) will be awarded a B. If you include decimal places in the lower limit settings (e.g., 90.0, 80.0, 70.0, 60.0), it will not round. In this case, a student with 79.9 will be awarded a C.

Technically, IGPro always rounds when displaying the students’ percentage grades. You determine how many decimal places it rounds to when you choose the number of decimals to be displayed. This can cause confusion, as in the examples below.

Student’s actual grade	Grade table lower limit (for a B)	Number of decimal places showing	Percentage student and parent see	Grade awarded by IGPro	Comments
79.499702…	80 OR 80.0	3	79.500	C+	The student’s actual grade is below 79.5 so the letter grade is rounded down. But the percentage is rounded to the thousandths place and that makes it appear that the grade should have been rounded up to B-.
		2	79.50	C+	These also look as if they should have been rounded up to a B-.
		1	79.5	C+
		0	79	C+	IGPro does not round up, because 79.499 is less than 79.5.
79.5238095…	80	3	79.524	B-	Letter grade is rounded up, percentage is accurate.
		2	79.52	B-
		1	79.5	B-	Notice that this student appears to have the same percentage the student 4 rows above but has a better letter grade.
		0	80	B-	With no decimals in the grade table AND no decimals showing, IGPro rounds the grade up AND rounds up the percentage.
	80.0	3	79.524	C+	With a decimal in the grade table, IGPro does not round the grade.
		2	79.52	C+
		1	79.5	C+
		0	80	C+	With a decimal in the grade table, but 0 decimal places showing in the percentage, IGPro rounds the percentage up, but still does not round the grade. Now it looks as though this student has 80% and a C. Don’t do this!

If you choose not to follow this recommendation, you will probably be well advised to display more decimal places than you use in your lower limit. Even then, however, you may still (infrequently) see grades that look as if they should have been rounded up but were not.

To get to this screen, go to the Setup menu, select “Grading Rules” and click on the “Grade Tables” tab.

Submitted by Ginger Riddle

Posted 10/29/04