Frontline Special Ed & Interventions vs. PowerSchool Student Information System

As described above, the RtI data can be reviewed by the special education team in order to see if regular education teachers need to gather more data before referring a student to special education. It is also well suited for using with transferred students from other schools or districts.

Incentivized

PowerSchool Student Information System is a cool software that can be highly recommended to anyone who is living in the educational management space. It is proven that this software can reduce your manual workload massively if you use it right. Plus it is really worth the price you pay. Especially if you are in the administrative field, this software will help you to minimize manual efforts put into student registrations, staffing recruitment, and main resource management processes.

Incentivized

• Enrich provides a step by step process helping the special education team to organize all necessary information that includes state and federal compliance laws specifically the legislation of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is entered correctly.
• It is organized to provide the entire special education team with access to see the documentation of services and assessments.
• It also has an ability to organize the process for RtI (Response to Intervention) which identifies the students who qualify for special education services. The special education team has access to see this information to determine if the teachers need to gather more information before referring the student for special education services.

Incentivized

• PowerSchool houses student or staff information that can be easily accessed by those teachers and administrators who need the information. This allows everyone to go to one place to access information.
• Parents can view their child's grades at any time with their protected login on a parent portal. This allows teachers to keep parents informed and involved in their child's progress at school. When everyone works together it increases our students' chance for success.
• PowerSchool offers videos to train new users. When we have new employees, the videos can be accessed at any time the employee needs as opposed to them waiting for someone to help them.

Incentivized

• There is a tremendous amount of repetition of data entry. For example, you press buttons to describe services i.e. direct or indirect services and how much service time a child will receive. THEN, you have to enter it again with a sentence i.e. " The child will receive (direct or indirect) speech and language (or reading or math) services for a such and such amount of time. " There are other examples of how the provider needs to repeat information that has already been gathered by the program.
• Of course, entering all of the data is very time-consuming.
• Training and access to consultants are needed in order to learn how to use the entire program.

Incentivized

• Does not consistently communicate with related software such as Illuminate for Special Education Students.
• Drop down menus frequently refresh as data is entered which slows down the user's ability to enter information.
• Icons are sometimes unclear and not easily understandable. Word labels for some items might be more effective.

Incentivized

We would be starting over at square one if we did not continue our PowerSchool subscription. We do not have a program in a place that would take its place.

Incentivized

Great features, but it can feel very cumbersome at times

Incentivized

Overall, I have not had to use support for PowerSchool Student Information System because our school district gives us training in each area in which we will be utilizing PowerSchool Student Information System. In terms of in-user support, I feel that there is mild to moderate user support that is built into PowerSchool SIS.

Incentivized

These other programs (Tranquility and Clarity) were used for the same purposes before the district and state started to use Enrich. The previous programs were harder to use and much more time-consuming. There is no comparison between Enrich and these other programs. I'm sure that other special education providers would agree that Enrich is the best one when compared to the previous 2 programs used for data gathering.

Incentivized

I have heard good things for Infinite Campus and Skyward. I would [evaluate] each of them and see what fits your needs. Each has their strengths and weaknesses and so picking the right one for your needs is important. PowerSchool [Student Information System] does have some great features, but lacks some fundamental reports and functions to make it top notch.

Incentivized

• Overall, there are more positives than negatives about using this program. Having a program that is used by the entire state has a positive impact because now the special education process is organized in the same manner

Incentivized

• It has created shortcuts for all staff members, saving us time.
• In creating shortcuts and combining many different systems into one, it is saving our school money.
• It has created a safety net for teachers because grades and student information is stored electronically, which means teachers not having to worry about losing or misplacing their grade books.

Incentivized