Rediker Administrator's Plus vs. Skyward Student Management System

It's a great system for storing student information and extracting it into usable data. If you're looking for a robust report creation system, though, it's not the best choice unless you have someone skilled with programming languages.

Incentivized

Skyward SMS is well suited as a Student Management System for anyone who wants to drive their organization based on data. The capabilities of using the fields available as well as adding our own custom forms make data collection extremely easy. Reporting abilities take that data and allow us to make sense of what has been collected

Incentivized

• The ease of data exports into easy Excel Spreadsheets is one of my favorite features. It allows me the ability to quickly see data and arrange it for ease of use of our teachers, administrative staff, and stakeholders.
• Administrative Plus can be easily customized to display student record data in the most relevant way for our organization.
• The customer service support team is always quick to respond, and extremely helpful. I can reach them through user forums, emails, or a phone call, and I know they will always provide a fast and thorough response.

Incentivized

• Skyward does well with managing the students' information. It was easy to find a student's schedule, grades, behavior record, or family information because it was all separated out.
• Another strength is the system’s way of requesting time off. All of the steps are laid out in a organized manner, and you can check the status of the request with one click.
• Skyward also pairs well with other applications. Whenever I need a substitute for a class, Skyward links me to Aesop (the absence software) and allows me to put in the request. When I’m done, Skyward updates automatically with that information.

Incentivized

• Their reports feature needs to be more user friendly. They use their own personal code to write reports, and it's not very user friendly to the average person. It would be much nicer to have a WYSIWYG editor where I could create what I wanted without having to know their special language.
• The system could use a more modern face lift, and perhaps a more intuitive interface.
• The sync process between the Parent, Teacher, and Student Portals is slow. Data should be continually synced between the two in real time, instead of initiated by the user.

Incentivized

• Skyward's reporting can get confusing so it would be nice if it was cleaner and possibly came with some common reports other schools use too.
• Skyward's GUI is out of date and needs a refresher.
• Skyward can have compatibility issues after an update.

Incentivized

It is the system I am most comfortable with, so having to learn a new system outweighs any problems I have with Skyward.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Overall great job, issues were taken care of. People in support do care.

Incentivized

Yes, I was part of the implementation team.

Incentivized

We were using Aeries for our student information system prior to Rediker, and it was a messy database with too much redundancy, making it difficult to extract the data you were looking for from the system.

Incentivized

Skyward is used differently at our school than GoGuardian. GoGuardian is used to monitor student use of technology during school hours, and Skyward is used to track student data such as attendance, uniform, tardy arrivals, grades, and behavior. Overall, Skyward's interface is more user-friendly than GoGuardian. GoGuardian requires even more clicking around to find what you are looking for

Incentivized

• A less expensive alternative as far as Student Information Systems go.

Incentivized

• I believe that we have had a great Return on our Investment as we have been using this software at a district-wide level for several years now and it keeps being an effective management software system for our students and families.

Incentivized