Weekly Engagement Report

Weekly Engagement Report in PowerTeacher
Posted on 12/04/2020 at 12:30

Effective Monday, December 7, 2020, changes will be made in PowerTeacher for the new Weekly Engagement Report. The following information was previously shared with principals and district staff and will also be sent to teachers.

Earlier this school year, the state released guidelines for attendance taking related to documenting instructional minutes that include distinguishing between synchronous, asynchronous, and in-person learning. In addition to daily attendance reporting, the state is also requiring educators to fill out a weekly engagement log by indicating the type of learning each student participated in for that week: Original Weekly Engagement Template from the State* (*provided for informational purposes only - DO NOT USE)

When the template was released, many districts, including ours, lobbied for the state to rescind the weekly engagement log requirement and advocated to only require daily attendance reporting procedures. After much discussion and deliberation, the state has upheld the requirement for a weekly engagement log but has allowed flexibility for districts to create reporting tools based on the student information systems they utilize.

Over the past few weeks, our IT department has examined all of the ways that this information could be reported centrally with the least amount of impact on educators. They have been able to create logs using daily attendance and application login times when students use their sandi.net accounts. The one component that we have not been able to recreate is the daily log of assignments. This is the only part of the state mandated requirements that will require teachers to enter and certify the report. To assist in the creation of the daily assignment log, IT has created a new page within PowerTeacher that will include the following:  

  • Daily assignment boxes that are pre-populated with any assignment names included in the PowerTeacher Gradebook
  • The ability to add text to the daily assignment boxes AND copy information into multiple sections
  • Checkboxes for each day to indicate the type of learning that occurred
  • Options for saving changes throughout the week prior to finalizing the log for weekly “certification”

The Weekly Engagement Report will be launched on December 7th. Since this weekly assignment log is a state requirement, educators will need to complete the report for each week of the 2020-21 school year, starting Sept. 8th. Educators will be able to navigate between weeks and only the classes offered during that time will appear in order to complete the report.

We understand that this is an unexpected requirement and a new process, and that it will take time to complete the reports leading up to the present date. Please know that we would not be asking educators to complete these reports if it was not absolutely necessary per the state mandate. We do not expect educators to complete this all within a single day or a single week. There is no minimum or maximum amount of information that needs to be provided for assignment details, but rather a snapshot of what assignments were assigned and/or completed each day. In an effort to support you, a Job Aid is available and open labs will be scheduled in the near future. Daily attendance taking procedures in PowerSchool will still remain in effect in order to satisfy all state reporting requirements.