Likelihood to Recommend Specifically speaking, SchoolSpeak is best used and only really utilized in education. From K-12 it serves a great purpose in terms of parent interaction and direct communication with parents about child performance, attendance, and scores in school. At younger ages, I think it will be even more appropriate for it to be used to create strictly parent platforms for helping them enroll in things they can do at home for their kids, teach their own children, and monitor their own children—especially if they are stay-at-home parents, homeschooling, or the children are not enrolled in school yet. I think a great idea would be creating a parent portal for newborns with daily activities to do from birth through age three, when they may go to pre-school. This is the only additional option I think that SchoolSpeak could serve.
Read full review There is nothing specific that I would say sets it apart from any other LMS, but once you are used to the user interface and various features, it does everything that is needed and integrates well enough with other software to function. Probably isn't necessary in a smaller setting, but for multiple building districts, it is certainly robust enough to handle data collection and storage.
Read full review Pros One thing it does well is one of the tools it incorporation, volunteer forms. These forms work for parents, teachers, and students. One of the hardest things to do is to get confirmation sign-ups and support. This streamlines the process of organizing events. The gradebook interface is easy to use and understand. In order to take attendance, complete grades and give assignments, SchoolSpeak actually is an easy platform to learn and is smoothly integrated. Archiving of past classes is easy to do and important because schools need to retain records for a long time after students have moved on. The platform lets you organize students and find them quickly by graduation. Read full review Flexibility. This multitude of fields available makes it easy to capture data the way we want or need to. Quick response to trouble tickets. The company strives to reach out to the customer within an hour and start the process of resolution. User focused. Improvements to the system always look at how the end user experience can be enhanced. Read full review Cons It can definitely have room for improvement in the design and template options. Using a more appealing layout like WIX or WEEBLY offer, but integrating the school speak platform into it would be a wonderful layout and great functionality. I would love to see social media integration. For business courses and media courses, there should be the ability to have social platforms connect directly and load within ShcoolSpeak. Social Media is the newest marketing strategy and it is left out of functionality here. Custom font downloads would make the design much easier and more attractive. The fonts they allow you to use are basic and overly common. Read full review Confusion when it comes to student grades- sometimes there are two different letter grades for a student for what is posted as "TR1" and "PR1." How does a teacher know which of these grades will be posted to a student's report card? How does a teacher know what the student's actual grade is for a particular course? Switching between the Educator Access Plus and Student Management tabs can be complicated, especially for those new to the system. Why can't everything be in one place? I recognize that Skyward logs out after a certain period of inactivity to preserve privacy of users, but is there a way to change those settings so that Skyward does not log out as frequently? It is difficult to keep having to log back in completely again. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is the system I am most comfortable with, so having to learn a new system outweighs any problems I have with Skyward.
Read full review Usability It takes some time to get used to navigating the features and layers, but once you know your way around it, it's pretty good.
Read full review Support Rating Overall great job, issues were taken care of. People in support do care.
Read full review Implementation Rating Yes, I was part of the implementation team.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Moodle Rooms is a free platform but involves the need to be computer savvy. It is easy to use as well as SchoolSpeak. However, SchoolSpeak does have a direct communication platform with parents something that Moodle does not currently offer. This itself is a huge competitive advantage. The comparison then becomes, would you like to do less work but purchase SchoolSpeak, or do more work using multiple platforms but they are free. The SchoolSpeak platform does offer much more for the investment. Longer term and with full school integration, the investment is worth it. If you were to mandate using a platform, it should be SchoolSpeak because there are fewer risks associated with having to coach and education teachers, and less risk of complaints.
Read full review I, personally, have not used other Student Management Systems, but having used Skyward, I do not necessarily feel any overwhelming desire to seek out the competitive software programs. Skyward does what it says it will and provides my school district with an easy and organized way to share and access all of the relevant student and family information we need. It serves it's purpose well and meets our needs.
Read full review Return on Investment Positively speaking, it has a positive ROI. Although expensive, the platform does solve issues that we as educators have in giving parents daily information about their child in school. It is difficult to email all parents or call all parents, but a one-click platform really saves time and is worth the investment. Negatively, there is a cost associated, and therefore, sometimes teachers can be given more work instead of buying a platform like this. Using other free tools could be more time consuming but cheaper. Using School Speak we have seen parent involvement increase. Read full review Overall, Skyward has had a positive impact. One way is the student information that is shared and available to see. If I need to know something about a student’s academic history, Skyward has it. Another way it has impacted our district is the way it has streamlined all of our payroll information. I can see check histories, different parts of my salary, and the year-end totals all in one place. Skyward has also made a big impact on our district by making it easier to communicate with parents. All the parents’ contact information is available and email is even included in the program. Read full review ScreenShots