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Earning credits on an academic plan

In a student's academic plan, PowerSchool SMS tallies earned credits [Figure 65] by course groups. When the student earns enough credits to meet the requirements of a course group, PowerSchool SMS applies the surplus credits to the next course group in the order of priority. The District Administrator sets the course group order of priority when creating the academic plan [>>].

For Permanent Record (PR) environments, the credit calculations are run as a nightly task. For non-PR environments, school administrators can manually update the credit calculations on the Calculate Grades, Credits, & GPAs page. (Refer to the Permanent Record Guide.)

On the student's academic plan page, PowerSchool SMS displays the student's current status for each course group and for the academic plan as a whole [Figure 65]. Possible states include:

= "Complete": Indicates that the student's earned credits meet the group's requirements.
= "In-progress": Indicates that the student has credit-awarding grade items [>>] pending for courses in the group.
= "Incomplete": Indicates that the student has no credit-awarding grade items pending.

When the student has earned enough credits to meet the credit requirements for all course groups in his or her plan, PowerSchool SMS designates the surplus earned and pending credits as non-contributing credits, that is, unused. Depending on how the academic plan is set up [>>], the surplus credits are either assigned to a designated course group or, on the student's Academic Plan page, PowerSchool SMS displays the courses with surplus credits in the Non-contributing course credits grid [Figure 65]; the display includes the reason for designation, which include:

= "Incorrect plan setup": The academic plan assigned to this student is set up incorrectly.
= "Overflow credits": The requirements of the course group to which these credits apply has been met.
= "Course does not exist in this plan": The course is not included in the student's academic plan.
= "No credits earned or pending": The student has taken a course included in the academic plan but no earned or pending credits are recorded for that course.
= "Dropped class": Grades were entered but no credits were earned and the student dropped the course before the final reporting period for the class. Note: If grades were entered and partial credits were earned before the class was dropped, the course appears in the plan with earned credits but no pending credits. If a credit-awarding course is dropped before the final reporting period and before any grades are entered, PowerSchool SMS does not include the course in the student's Academic Plan.

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