🎯 Purpose
This pathway guides administrators through a strategic timeline and technical checklist to ensure a seamless report card season. Follow this workflow to help mitigate common data discrepancies, streamline teacher communication, and deliver accurate report cards.
💡 Why This Task Matters
Report cards are one of the most visible touchpoints between a school and its community. In Otus, report cards are dynamic. They pull live data from gradebooks based on filters like dates, scales, and standards tags. Without proper groundwork, a single misaligned setting, like an assessment due date falling outside the term, can result in missing data for an entire grade level. Early preparation ensures the data is ready when you click "Export."
⚙️ Phase 1: Main Admin Technical Groundwork
Before communicating with staff, ensure the "engine" is tuned. Complete these steps from the Main Admin account in the Control Center:
Verify Academic Sessions & Grading Periods: Confirm start and end dates for the current term. Assessments must fall within these dates to appear on the report card.
❗️Ensure there are no gaps between grading periods. The start date of each grading period should be the day immediately following the end date of the previous period.
💡 Pro Tip: If a grading period ends on a Friday, it is recommended to set Sunday as the end date, allowing Monday to serve as the start date.
Audit Grading Scales: Ensure the correct grading scales (traditional points or standards-based) are active.
Total Grade Conversion: Enable standards-to-letter grade conversion if needed.
Create Standards Tags (SBG only): Group the standards you want to report on into a tag (e.g., "Q3 Math Standards") for easier selection during report generation.
Set Mastery Settings: Confirm calculation method (Highest, Most Recent, Decaying Average, Mean, or Mode) for final marks.
Suggested Administrative Action: Complete a "Settings Audit" at least three weeks before the end of the term to lock in grading scales and standards tags.
📣 Phase 2: Teacher Preparation & Communication
Clear communication prevents mismatched data:
Date Range Alignment: Provide teachers with the exact start and end dates for reports. Remind them that assessments outside this range will not be included on the report cards.
💡 Pro Tip: We recommend that teachers do not use the first and last day of the grading period to ensure the data falls within the date range.
“Include in Report Card” Toggle: Teacher comments require selecting a specific class (not “All Classes”), checking the box, and ensuring the note date is within the window.
Grading Scale Consistency: Confirm teachers use the correct scale. Mismatched scales (Points vs. Mastery) may prevent data from appearing.
Class Grade Levels: Ensure each class has a grade level assigned in Class Settings, which affects report card functionality.
🔍 Phase 3: Practice Run (Validation)
Perform a small-scale test a week before the live date to catch potential issues.
Select a Student Group: Create a test group of 5–10 students across grades.
Generate a Draft: Navigate to Analytics > Reports > Report Card > Fill Template
Troubleshoot Gaps: Confirm standards, comments, and school logo (500x500px recommended) appear correctly.
❗️Ensure teachers review the Assessments view of the gradebook for each class, filtering to the appropriate grading period, to confirm that all expected assessments are included. If any assessments are missing, they should adjust the assessment’s due date so it falls within the correct grading period.
🖨️ Phase 4: Generate, Print, and Keep a Copy
Follow these best practices for a smooth final export:
Batching Strategy: Avoid timeouts by running no more than 500 students at once. Filter by grade level or by site for larger schools.
Printing Logic: Otus inserts blank pages for odd-numbered report cards so double-sided printing starts each student on a fresh sheet.
Keep a Copy: Save PDFs. Report cards cannot be regenerated after the school year ends. Upload final PDFs to the Otus Bookshelf for future access.
💡 Pro Tip: Just as you would keep a copy of a report card in a student’s cumulative file, we recommend saving a copy of each generated PDF for your records and future reference.
💡 FAQ and Troubleshooting
💡 FAQ and Troubleshooting
Grades are missing: Check if the assessment due date is outside the report card date range.
Assessment sorting: Due dates are used to determine the grading period an assessment is included in. If there is no due date chosen, the system uses the date submitted and then the date graded instead. Adding a due date for each assessment is suggested.
Comments are missing: Ensure teachers select a specific class and check “Include in Report Card.”
Logo is distorted or not uploading: Re-upload a square version of your logo (max 25MB).
Additional troubleshooting tips: Click here.