Student Management Systems

What Are Student Management Systems?

A student management system (also known as a student information system) helps a school manage data, communications, and scheduling for students. A school system generates and uses a large amount of data, which must be communicated appropriately to students, faculty, and parents. A student information system helps schools store, manage, and distribute this information.

Some student information systems are designed to serve all of a school’s student data management needs. Other student information systems are specialized. These specialized solutions target specific needs, such as school applications or student behavior tracking.

Student information systems provide many benefits to educational institutions, mostly stemming from centralized data management and accessibility. Teachers can more easily input, manage, and access student data. Parental guardians get better visibility into how their students are performing in classes. State-level compliance and other regulatory requirements are also much easier to fulfill.

Student Management vs. School Management Systems

The educational technology (EdTech) space has become more crowded, with increasingly overlapping products across different educational needs. For instance, school management and student information systems are often conflated and have many overlapping capabilities. However, there are some important distinctions to be aware of.

Student information systems focus on the management of students’ data and base their data structures on the individual student level. This is distinct from school management, which is more all-encompassing of factors like facilities management, cafeteria procurement processes, and more school-specific accounting functions.

Some EdTech vendors have leaned into the “all-in-one” approach to school management that includes student management as well as all other aspects of school administration and data management. However, these platform offerings may be overkill for some organizations, and may not offer the best capabilities in specific areas. These tradeoffs make standalone student information systems appealing to organizations that need best-of-breed student management capabilities and portals specifically tailored to student data.

Student Information Systems Features & Capabilities

Student information systems may encompass a range of features depending on the scope of a particular product. However, leading products should have most or all of the following feature areas:

Student Data

• Student Attendance Tracking
• Student Health Information
• Grade Book Management
• Student Background Information- Family, age, behavior data
• Student and Parent Portal
• Transcript Management

Student and Faculty Administration

• Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology
• Online Registration Management
• District Communications, such as messaging and alerting
• Roster Management
• Platform customization
• Teacher Self-Service
• Student Data Security
• Community Support
• Class Scheduling
• State and National-level Reporting
• Compliance Support
• Teacher and Parent Mobile Application

Student Management Systems Comparison

When comparing different student information systems, consider the following:

• Student Management vs. School Management: Does the organization need a system specifically for managing student data, or other school functions as well? Consider the scope of the use case in question in order to determine whether a point solution or a broader platform is a better fit.
• Integrations: Does each SMS integrate with the other existing EdTech systems that the organization uses? Preventing data silos is crucial to long-term manageability and scalability, so buyers should ensure that data can easily flow from the SMS product to the other systems in their tech stack, and vice versa.
• Use case: Is the organization a k-12 school, higher education institution, or professional development/certification organization? Many student information systems will be tailored to one of these three groups, although some products can serve more than one group.

Start a student information systems comparison here

Pricing Information

Pricing for student management systems varies greatly depending on the size and needs of the school. Additionally, student information system vendors rarely release pricing information. Speak to a vendor to get a detailed estimate for your needs.

Some vendors offer per-student pricing. This pricing model may be per month or per year. Per-month prices may range from under $2.00 per student to over $10.00 per student. Per-year prices may exceed $20.00 per student.

Other vendors offer monthly subscriptions to their software without a per-student fee. Depending on the capabilities of the software, prices may range from under $10.00 per month to over $1,000.00 per month.