PowerSchool Student Information System vs. SchoolAdmin

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

SchoolAdmin has been great to work with and the advantages of the product definitely outweigh the disadvantages. With the frequent turnover in admissions offices, it is nice to have a product that is simple to use, easy to train on, and easy to learn quickly. Also, customer support has been great, and we really put them through their paces and they never complain. They also use their support team to help train you - not just give you a fish, but teach you to fish so you can problem solve on your own.

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

• The online application and checklist - because it is highly customizable, fairly intuitive, and quite effective for managing all the moving parts of our application process.
• The online enrollment checklist, forms, and contract - because of the level of customization, the level of professional appearance, the ease of tracking and managing students in the enrollment process, the integration it provides to our FACTS billing and payment system.
• The communications system - because of the possibilities for both internal and external communications are so vast, the ability to produce highly customized, personalized, and segmented emails, text messages, and/or physical letters, and the relative ease of use.

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

• Not as flexible as we sometimes need the features to be.
• Data and historical information is not terribly accurate, which means we cannot use it for reporting.

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

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

Blackbaud's enrollment management product, OnBoard, was extremely clunky and did not support an online review process. The CRM was also not great. The only benefit of it was that it was a seamless experience, as Blackbaud is our academic software. The import/export from SchoolAdmin into/from Blackbaud has been no problem.

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

• Customer satisfaction with our CRM is up.
• Completion of applications is up.
• Office use and satisfaction with the product internally is way up!

Incentivized