Reports & Exports for Counselors & Administrators

There are a number of pages and canned reports that will be of particular interest to school based staff. Here are some tips and notes for specific functions and reports as well as links to training and other resources.

Built-in pages for checking student records and progress

On the Start Page, go to: Special Functions > Search By Grades/Attendance

Use this window to find students meeting one or more criteria. Similar to the Mark Exception report in SASI. Once you have found them, you can print lists or reports on these students or visit any/all of the following pages.

In the navigation menu in a student record, you will find the Academics pages:

• Attendance - attendance viewing and entry
• Cumulative Info - term based GPA or credit calculation can be stored in the 12 slots here
• Graduation Progress - shows accumulation by credit type
• Historical Grades - all stored grades, including exams and progress
• Honor Roll - storage location for schools using honor roll calculation
• Standards - not in use currently
• Teacher Comments - teachers may write comments here which are separate from those included on the report card
• Term Grades - grades by term; click on a percentage to see the assignments associated with the course
• Test Scores - currently being loaded; find lexile levels now
• Truancies - not in use

Reports for checking student records and progress 

There are two basic kinds of reports in PowerSchool: 'canned' reports on the Reports page and reports built by the district accessed under the 'Print A Report' option.

Canned Reports are accessed from the the Start Page, go to: Reports > Reports (System)

Among the reports on this page of particular usefulness to counselors are:

• Section Enrollment Audit - A report of possible section enrollment errors.
• At Risk - Listing of courses, sections and grades associated with students currently at risk of failing for the current term.
• Student Schedule Listing - User definable student schedule report. Can include current grades and attendance.

AAPS Defined/Definable Reports

These reports are designed to be printed for one or more selected students (i.e. find the kids, print the report). PowerSchool includes interfaces for building report cards/schedules, mailing labels, form letters and transcripts. Look for the available reports in the group functions menu when working with a selection of records or in the 'Print A Report' option at the top of the navigation menu when looking at an individual student. See examples of form letter fields here.

Fields, Functions, Calculations and Exports

For the most part, PowerSchool is a big filing cabinet with slots to receive any and all pieces of data we collect about individual students. Luckily, it also contains a few 'magic' file folders that will look through all of the records for one or more students and return calculated information about the records.

All available student fields are accessible via the 'View Field List' link right under the search slot on the Start Page. Note also the 'How to Search' link right next to the field list. Note that the student fields are by no means the only ones you can search and you may use these fields in conjunction with other information (schedules, grades, etc) to pull together more comprehensive spreadsheets. PowerSchool also contains what are called Data Access Tags (DATs) that may also bring data from other tables to you on the student search line or in Quick Exports to Excel. See also our quick review of searches and DATs on this site.

FAQs That Counselors Can Use

Here are some of the existing FAQs from our collection that may be useful to you.

• I am having trouble with searches. How do I find kids who...
• How do I get started using the Administrative site? (PDF)
• How do I find students with less than a full load?
• How can I get a list of all the school numbers?
• Why would some courses be missing from a transcript or not counting in GPA?
• What are some examples of fields I can use in letters or forms in PowerSchool?
• How do I prepare my records for the change of school years?
• How do I retain a student?
• How to I transfer students to a new building in the middle of the school year?
• How do I make report PDFs open in a viewer instead of cluttering my desktop?
• Do you have a year of graduation table?
• Why won't my labels line up?!?
• Why do I get an error when I go to the PowerSchool site?
• Why don't the graphics show on the PowerSchool site?
• Why do I keep getting logged out?
• How do I get back to the Start Page after viewing a report without using the Back button?

Users Groups

Nearly all districts in the county are now in PowerSchool so the pool of potential tips, tricks and reports is bigger now. Let's exploit that!! Join the PowerSchool User Group (PSUG) here in Michigan and the national group:

Michigan PSUG on Yahoo Groups

Michigan PSUG wiki

National PSUG on Yahoo Groups

You can also sign up to get access to the Pearson PowerSource site. This gets you access to the same user guides and forums we use down here in ITD. Request a login from Sally or Julie.