Not getting the expected results from conditional formatting

In your uploaded file the format is working but probably in not the way you intend.

In the relative / absolute addressing in your formula =$J7 > (COUNTA(B7:B41)*0.5 I'm not

exactly certain how Excel is interpreting the relative cell addressing in the

COUNTA(B7:B41) part. I tried applying absolute addressing to COUNTA.......$B$7:$B$41 and

the results highlighted H7:J10 as well as H20:J21 which is what I suspect you want to happen

and is consistent with values greater than half the student count (8).

Try changing COUNTA(B7:B41) to COUNTA($B$7:$B$41) to see.

If you use a formula like COUNTA(B7:B41) in CF (actually at any time) without "fixing" or absoluting the range, and you copy that CF rule down, the cell refs inside the function change accordingly...
H7=COUNTA(B7:B41)
H8=COUNTA(B8:B42)
H9=COUNTA(B9:B43)

I7=COUNTA(C7:C41)
I8=COUNTA(C8:C42)
I9=COUNTA(C9:C43)
etc

To overcome this, you need to change that to...
=COUNTA($B$7:$B$41) with the rest of your formula, of course.

As a tip, sometimes, when CF is not behaving as you expect, put that same formula from CF into the worksheet itself, and copy down - then you can look at how the references are behaving, and adjust as needed

@FlameRetired--thank you! That fixed it. I didn't even think about the absolute relative addressing in the formula--I just assumed it wouldn't change. I even told myself to fix the range, but figured that probably wasn't the cause. Thank you again!

Im happy that explained it for you, thanks for the feedback