PowerSchool SIS Reviews

Powerschool gives me POWER to manage student information from attendance, schedule, to grades inputting and printing. It has also great features that stores students' contacts, demographics, cumulative grade information, quick lookup of grades, submit log entry, teacher comments and test results. With all of these, teachers have a great tool as a class record. Likewise, parents have access to monitor their students progress in school while administration has reliable, accurate and responsive information system.

Using PowerSchool Student Information System, teachers like me has enjoyed recording and monitoring students progress over the year. Indeed, PowerSchool gives me power to manage my students' information in a click, anywhere and anytime. Thank you PowerSchool!

Powerschool streamlines all of the students information in one place to make it convenient to contact home, look at demographics data, attendance, and more.

The only con is it can be difficult to get information updated as if parents/students do not know their account info they must go through the site admin which can delay information updates.

I like that it updates the students every time I input a grade (after I hit "save"). That is motivational for students.

Please note that the cons that exist here are features that exist in almost every other SIS that I have used in my experience and prevent me from using this efficiently. Not in order: 1) I cannot toggle between the first quarter, second quarter, and semester exam. The semester exam is not even there. 2) If I want to input the same grade for an assignment for all students, there isn't a code where I can fill down or copy a score from one student to the rest. 3) The assignments automatically default to percent-based, so if I put a 10 out of 10, it comes out as 10%, and I have to remember to select "points" instead of percent. 4) If multiple classes have the exact same assignment but a different point-amount or dates, I cannot change particular features of that assignment for that class, once the assignment is created. 5) There is no symbol that calculates as a 0 but is a notification for absentees. Instead, they see the 0 (even if I have the green absentee symbol next to it), and automatically think, "That's it." It demotivates students, even if I repeatedly remind them they can make it up if they were absent. Other programs use "Z" for this feature. 6) I cannot press tab between columns. 7) The bar on the right with the number pad, student information, etc., that appears when inputting grades, takes up too much room, especially if I am splitting my screen between PowerSchool and a spreadsheet. Those are the top cons, but there are more.

I love PowerSchool! I use it for attendance, grades, and to access information about my students. I love that I can get everything I need in one place.

Really, there isn't anything I don't like about PowerSchool. I've used other systems and this is the one I prefer.

Love the use of PowerSchool, love being able to make seating charts, sync grades, etc.

I don’t like having to click 15 different areas just to see the students demographics or other information.

The program is easy to use and works across many different platforms and plugins. Overall, works for our school's specific need.

PowerSchool has been promising that they will have a version of their gradebook that works on chromebooks, which has not been delivered as of yet.

From a teacher's point of view, it does exactly what I need. It allows me to easily take attendance, and allows my supply teachers to do the same.

This isn't necessarily a knock on the software, but I wish I had more control over reporting. This is probably something that is locked at the administrative level, and not a developer issue.

I enjoy the ease of use and how I can access every student immediately using the software. It gives me all of the pertinent information at my fingertips.

Sometimes the interface feels a little dated, but that seems to be because we are slower to roll out in NC.

I like that I can see my current and past grades. I also like that I can see my attendances and most information related to my school.

I cannot find my class ranking anywhere! I also do not know how to find my unweighted GPA. It can also be a pain to log into it.

Powerschool SIS and the hosted version are very powerful SIS systems. They have extensive reporting capabilities and features including their new Powerteacher Pro in place of gradebook. Teachers can easily enter grades and admin can generate state and locally needed reports. Tech support is very good and it has a large user base which is great for forum help.

It has a steep learning curve and the training courses are rather pricey. The self hosted feature is cheaper but you run a higher risk of outages.

The capabilities and information that is available at your fingertips is extremely helpful. Very easy to pre-enroll and enroll students. We have account creation automated through PowerSchool, so when a student is enrolled, within 24 hours their school accounts are created, such as Active Directory, email, etc. This is very handy for our department.

Some of the features available in PowerSchool are: information management, reporting, IEP tracking , admissions management, billing and payment, student information management, student portal, parent portal, registration and scheduling, gradebooks and transcripts to name a few. Having everything in one place has been convenient for our staff and students.

There are so many bells and whistles, sometimes it is hard to figure out how to complete a task. However their help menu is very helpful. We also have the privilege of having our ISD available for help.

They listened to concerns and came out with updates to fix issues. Our administrators send out upgrade tutorials so we have the cutting edge knowledge. Once you use it regularly it becomes second nature.

Inability to run reports with specific field of information. Had to rely on administrators to update and create reports that weren't standard. No friendly user manual, used one created by our administrators.

What's really amazing about this software is how it manages to send hundreds of staff members input (grades, attendance, comments) to thousands of students and parents phones, laptops, tablets ect. seamlessly and easily, with plenty of extra essential features such as scheduling, and sign-ups, and substitute teacher logins, usually withourt any hiccups.

The android application is absolutely dreadful. Announcements rarely display properly and the menu is just a list of text. The app looks awful and many students report frequent crashing. The iOS app is only a slight improvement over the android version with a better GUI and less crashes. Both apps are missing a refresh feature (pull-down) and have no way of checking that the information displayed is current, often only updating a few minutes after the app is opened, causing the wrong days announcements to be displayed, and some students miss crucial information.

I have no idea how complex the software is to configure and maintain, but as a parent of older students, it's invaluable to me. It gives me the chance to stay on top of what's happening academically so things don't get too out of hand before I ask or do anything .

It's not a con as much as a wish. The app has the kids' schedules already. It would be great if the class or teacher linked to the teacher website. At the start of the year, I always go through and bookmark everything that comes home, but those links inevitably get lost. Would be great to have them attached to the schedule.

Being able to view grades and teacher comments

The navigation labeling is confusing and misleading. What is the difference between "Grade History" and "Historical Grades"? They are two separate pages, but the distinction is not obvious to me. There is nothing shown on either one. "Grades and Attendance" only displays attendance, not grades. Finally found grades under "Standards Grades History" but had to scroll down to see it. The first thing shown is a schedule. This is not an expected information architecture.

The grades are laid out in a table with numbers, letters, and symbols indicating performance. You need to scoll up and down to see what they mean in the legend at the bottom of the page. There are 13 different symbols to have to refer to in the legend. You easily lose your place going back and forth to see what the symbol is supposed to indicate. I'd rather have it spelled out in the table instead of referring to a symbol. You could probably even put the legend in a floating div to the left or right of the grade table so it's easier to reference.

The usability of this site is poor. I needed help from others to find what I was looking for. The overall design is lackluster. Could use quite a few improvements to make this a better experience.

I use this as a parent AND as an educator. As a parent, I like being able to see how my children are doing any time that I would like to. As an educator, I like my students and their parents/guardians being able to see how their student is performing. I can also makes notes like "student slept", "didn't turn in assignment" etc. Helps eliminate confusion.

I love everything that I know about this software.