Best-in-Class SIS that will take you well into the future!
December 17, 2019

Best-in-Class SIS that will take you well into the future!

Terica Bergan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with PowerSchool Student Information System

We use PowerSchool as the master source for all student data. We also use it for managing state reporting data. We have found that it is very customizable and can be tailored to house the data we need. We have 2 school districts, and it is used by both. It allows us to keep all data in a single location to best manage the quality of our data. Importing and exporting data and automating those processes has been invaluable, as we have connected PowerSchool to our state testing system, therefore our roster within other systems is accurate, even when a new student is enrolled.

Pros

  • PowerSchool SIS has made reporting much easier. The ability for us to have instant reports for our administrator is very important, but the ability to pull the raw data and customize our own reports is crucial.
  • Tracking attendance is very important as we have truancy issues in our district and often have to provide documentation for court. It is very easy to track, print reports and customize our attendance codes.

Cons

  • The good is that PowerSchool is easy to use, the ugly is that you will need a dedicated person if you ever want to do a lot of customizations. So someone with a basic technical knowledge of relational databases is key to getting your money's worth out of PowerSchool. Frequently we need additional reports not already offered in PowerSchool, so we have someone that is familiar with sql that can create them inside of PowerSchool.
  • The built-in report card module for standards based report cards has always been my biggest disappointment. It's not that it's not there, it's just that you need someone with a programming mentality to be able to make a nice clean report. And changes are tedious and time-consuming to make.
  • Because our school district is unique in our goals and aggressive in being a leader in our county, we have to do more customization than most and we do not always have the staff knowledge to do some of the customizations. Fortunately, PowerSchool partners with some really great companies that have add-on plug-ins that we can purchase at a reasonable cost or have for free. Their customer support is top notch and will not give up unless there is absolutely no feasible way at a solution.
  • Because PowerSchool is widely used around the state, many of our new teachers already have a good understanding of the tool and this cuts down on so much training that we have to provide initially.
Our previous SIS went out of business, and we needed something fairly soon. PowerSchool was the SIS that had the best ability for our state reporting. We liked what we heard from other states and districts about the innovation and continued improvement by PowerSchool.

Admin, Teachers, Parent and Students all have access to the system. The ability to customize the product is also a huge advantage over competitors.

When I was a new PowerSchool Administrator for the District, I utilized customer support daily and found that the people on the other end of the line are not only very knowledgeable about the service, but are also very gracious and willing to help. I was not made to feel stupid, and they were willing to explain everything so I could avoid future mistakes. I could not appreciate that more.

Do you think PowerSchool Student Information System delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with PowerSchool Student Information System's feature set?

Yes

Did PowerSchool Student Information System live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of PowerSchool Student Information System go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy PowerSchool Student Information System again?

Yes

PowerSchool Student Information System is flexible and customizable enough to facilitate districts of any size. It works out of the box, but can be heavily customized to fit the needs of individual customers. It also has externally available data connections so even if there is something you can't figure out how to do in the system, a simple data export or SQL query can make all the difference. Because we have many non-traditional schools in our district, virtual and alternative ed, we need PowerSchool to keep our state data clean and organized. It is constantly updated when our state makes changes to the rules. However I don't think it would be cost-effective for a district that has fewer than 1,000 students.

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