PowerSchool SIS

Score8.4 out of 10

72 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for PowerSchool Student Information System are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Customizability: Users have praised PowerSchool Student Information System for its highly customizable nature, with multiple reviewers stating that they can create their own fields and tables to tailor the system to their specific needs. This flexibility allows them to efficiently manage and track student information in a way that aligns with their unique requirements.

Integration capabilities: Several users have expressed appreciation for PowerSchool's extensive list of partners, highlighting that it simplifies the process of managing student data across multiple platforms. Reviewers have mentioned that if users already use another system for student data, chances are high that it can integrate seamlessly with PowerSchool. This integration capability enhances efficiency and provides a seamless experience for users.

Strong support system: Multiple reviewers have commended PowerSchool's strong support system, emphasizing the quick response time from customer support. They mentioned rarely being put on hold when calling support and finding reliable assistance through active user forums. The responsive customer support offered by PowerSchool ensures that users receive timely help when needed, enhancing their overall experience with the software.

Reviews

32 Reviews

The most efficient student information system!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 19, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am currently employed as an administrative support manager at a local educational firm. During the time of my employment, the major problem our management had was to find a solution for proper data and information integration between the company, students, parents, and the teachers. This problem got us to investigate many learning management software but an LMS couldn't offer what we were looking for. This is when we were introduced to Power School Student Information System which seemed to be a pretty cool problem solver at that time as it offered us the ability to simplify student registrations online via web forms which happened to be an amazing stress reliever for the company.

Pros

Admissions management.
Proper student/parent documentation management.
Payment process management.

Cons

Social media integration of the educational institute could be added.
Website of the educational institute could be integrated.
A main dashboard with student statistics could be added.

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool Student Information System is a cool software that can be highly recommended to anyone who is living in the educational management space. It is proven that this software can reduce your manual workload massively if you use it right. Plus it is really worth the price you pay. Especially if you are in the administrative field, this software will help you to minimize manual efforts put into student registrations, staffing recruitment, and main resource management processes.

Sachi Subaran

Administrative Support Manager in Corporate at Teachables (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

PowerSchool SIS Powers up!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 12, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use PowerSchool Student Information System everyday in the morning for checking attendance, for synching grades from Schoology, for monitoring students' grades quarterly and throughout the school year in all subjects, log entries, login details , demographics and medical alert. PowerSchool SIS resolves issues in grading student's works and daily attendance.

Pros

keeping and recording grades
checking attendance
keeping students' academic records
keeping student's private information

Cons

PowerSchool Student Information System is better if it has the capacity of sending emails to parents and students
PowerSchool Student Information System is better if it has the capacity of sending alerts to parents if student is late or tardy or absent in class

Likelihood to Recommend

For five years with PowerSchool Student Information System, it has effective functionalities that have helped both teachers and parents in keeping track of students academic performance, and attendance; generating learning data for planning and preparation; generating attendance report and report card; keeping students academic, medical and other confidential information; and very minimal downtime.

Juvy Mojares

Teacher in Research & Development at Somerton Middle School (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

PowerSchool Keeps Everything in One Place!

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 11, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Power School to manage our student information, and student enrollment, schedule classes, give grades and report cards and communicate grades to parents and guardians. It is our go-to place for student management and a place to store information. We use Power School throughout our county in all of the schools.

Pros

Scheduling students.
Grades
Integration with other products.

Cons

Scheduling students could use a more streamlined approach.
Learning how to use PowerSchool can seem intimidating at first.
Some of the selections in the program are small and hard to read or see.

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool is great for schools to keep track of student information, schedules, and grades. It integrates with other programs to make setting up classes easier and faster. PowerSchool gives teachers a singular place to find information or input students' grades. It also has an app for parents or guardians to use to check their student's grades which is very useful.

Amber AuBain

Teacher at Caldwell County Schools (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

PowerSchool - Big but easy

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 13, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PowerSchool SIS is the heart of the school district and is the master of the student data. It is used by everyone from administration to the classroom teacher. It handles registration, class schedules, attendance, grades, incident management and many more parts of the school ecosystem.

Pros

Accurate student data repository
easy to use teacher portal and gradebook
Parent portal access to grades and alerts

Cons

Access to the DB for external integrations
Lengthy product suggestion implementation
Downtime support

Likelihood to Recommend

It is great for the E-12 school system management. Small and large schools can all benefit from this SIS.

It would not be the best for college level schools.

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

PowerSchool is a powerful tool for teachers and students to maintain schedules .

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

March 27, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use PowerSchool [Student Information System] to do grades and attendance. PowerSchool has acquired many different companies and has expanded their offerings to out price themselves for many small districts. PowerSchool is a strong leader in the SIS world, and teachers like using it. Administrators like it a little less than teachers, and our IT staff have a hard time with it, (teachers win) We have been with PowerSchool since 2000 and have seen it grow in to what it is today. They have over promised and under delivered student data added cost by creating more addons to which I would expect to be part of the core function. PowerSchool is customizable if you have the skills to do so and they are finally getting past some of the limitations of the databases it was on 20 years ago, I feel like they have put more effort in new addons and frills instead of improving and fixing the core product. They have used the money they get for maintenance to build other products instead of maintain the product we are paying for. It works well for teachers and students, and so we keep with them, but I feel they have much to improve on for me to be satisficed with their service and product.

Pros

Student Grades
Teacher Gradebook
Parent Portal
Course management
Attendance
State Reports

Cons

Student Data Management
Speed of Page loads are long
Analysis of student information
Contacts

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool [Student Information System] is a solid program for teacher and students to track attendance and has a good gradebook if you use no other programs, it is not a good player with other systems and is hard to get data out of to may data driven decisions. PowerSchool does offer API and integration with some programs but you only can have read-only access to the database so if you need to write something you have to use their interface.

Spencer Cook

Director Of Technology in Information Technology at Sugar Salem School District (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

16 years of experience

View profile

PowerSchool - A Great Educational Resource

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 16, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PowerSchool is used at our school by the entire organization. The teachers use it in the classroom for daily attendance, as the grading system and for classroom reports. The secretarial staff and guidance counselors use PowerSchool to track and report attendance, student personal information for grades and transcripts. PowerSchool addresses a one stop shopping learning management system. All the information that is needed can be located in one place and is able to do many different things by various people. The same information that is needed by teachers, administrators or counselors can be all accessed from the same place.

Pros

Easy grading capabilities
Attendance taking capabilities
Reports

Cons

More varieties of reporting

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool is a great resource for teachers who need a medium for their grading system. Grades can be easily entered and calculated. More varieties or ability to manipulate reporting would be a helpful addition.

Marie Smith

Computer Science Teacher at St. Thomas Aquinas High School (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

View profile

Useful but needs work

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 16, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The system has a great deal of potential but is not consistent when communicating with other management software. It is relatively easy to learn and use. It calculates final grades and allows for specific weighting on different assignments. Sometimes the icons are not clearly indicative of the purpose of the links. It needs work but, overall, the program serves the purpose for which it is intended.

Pros

Allows for weighting of assignments.
Logging discipline notes that follow the student from grade to grade.
Calculates grades accurately.

Cons

Does not consistently communicate with related software such as Illuminate for Special Education Students.
Drop down menus frequently refresh as data is entered which slows down the user's ability to enter information.
Icons are sometimes unclear and not easily understandable. Word labels for some items might be more effective.

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool offers an app for parents that allows them to easily check their child's grades and/or assignments. Frequently demographic data that is updated in Powerschool does not transfer to other software as is expected. Viewing student scoresheets is handy when entering many grades at once.

Heather Skulan

Compliance Auditor at Wakefield Marenisco School District (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

PowerSchool Student Information System fulfills our needs

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PowerSchool Student Information System is being used by our entire school district to manage student registration, classroom rosters, grading, reporting, communications, and more. This system integrates with a variety of other educational systems that we use for academic needs. Rosters from PowerSchool Student Information System are shared seamlessly with other platforms, allowing for smooth account management of all systems. We currently use PowerSchool Student Information System with Google, Canvas (our learning management system), Discovery Education, and Clever.

Pros

What I like best about PowerSchool Student Information System is that you can use it as a very basic level (rosters, attendance, grades) or go to very deep levels of integration with other PowerSchool systems (registration, human resources, special education).
The PowerSchool Student Information System support system is strong among current users of the product. There is a vibrant community of end users who are willing to help other users.
Resources for self learning are abundant in the PowerSchool Student Information System Community site.

Cons

What I don't like is that it sometimes too complex for the typical user.
Secretaries live in PowerSchool Student Information System as part of their duties. Some of the knowledge necessary to get the most out of PowerSchool Student Information System requires some level of programming knowledge, which is beyond most secretaries' skill sets.
As PowerSchool continues to purchase other platforms to expand their offerings, it is difficult to stay up to speed on all of the trainings.
Bigger is not always better. Just because you can expand and offer features doesn't mean you should.

Likelihood to Recommend

The PowerSchool Student Information System registration system makes it easy for our parents to enroll their children in our district. Once they are enrolled, PowerSchool Student Information System gives parents one location to keep an eye on their child's academic progress throughout their school career.

Because we have mandated reporting for education, PowerSchool Student Information System does a fairly good job of meeting our state reporting needs. I applaud them for that, as that requires their teams to be familiar with the requirements of all states (and countries, as they are used worldwide).

PowerSchool Student Information System has done some work to improve critical logs for reporting purposes. However, we often find we have to make additional investments with third-party providers as their plug-ins provide better functionality.

David Tchozewski

Director of Information Technology in Information Technology at Kenowa Hills Public Schools (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

Gathering Information for Staff and Families

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

January 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the PowerSchool Student Information System to collect student demographic data and apply grades and comments to families.

Pros

PowerSchool Student Information System does a great job of organizing information.
PowerSchool Student Information System has smooth grading processes.

Cons

It is not intuitive to know all the shortcuts and system tools.
Training takes multiple days to get comfortable.

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool Student Information System is well designed for putting together a large group of students and family information for teachers to access for communication. It's also well suited for staff to apply grades and comments.

Ben Westby

Educator in Customer Service at Garfield RE2 (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

PowerSchool Student Information System Review from an Educator

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 23, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PowerSchool is being used by my organization as a full-roll-out Student Information System portal. Not only can staff track attendance, grades, etc., but also parents can login to their Parent View of Power School and then can access their student's grades, attendance, and notifications there. I find power school very user friendly and enjoy using it over Schoolology.

Pros

Grade Book
Attendance

Cons

IEP Integration
Benchmark Score Integration

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel that PowerSchool Student Information System is well suited for the following settings:
- elementary schools
- middle schools
- high schools
- small community colleges
- private schools

On the other hand, I do not feel that PowerSchool Student Information System is well suited for universities or large community colleges because of their sheer size. I have seen PowerSchool SIS used with a student population of >500, but not more than 500 students.

Whitney Garnai, M. Ed.

Special Educator in Professional Services at Isle of Wight County Schools (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

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PowerSchool Student Information System fulfills our needs

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

What I like best about PowerSchool Student Information System is that you can use it as a very basic level (rosters, attendance, grades) or go to very deep levels of integration with other PowerSchool systems (registration, human resources, special education).
The PowerSchool Student Information System support system is strong among current users of the product. There is a vibrant community of end users who are willing to help other users.
Resources for self learning are abundant in the PowerSchool Student Information System Community site.

Cons

What I don't like is that it sometimes too complex for the typical user.
Secretaries live in PowerSchool Student Information System as part of their duties. Some of the knowledge necessary to get the most out of PowerSchool Student Information System requires some level of programming knowledge, which is beyond most secretaries' skill sets.
As PowerSchool continues to purchase other platforms to expand their offerings, it is difficult to stay up to speed on all of the trainings.
Bigger is not always better. Just because you can expand and offer features doesn't mean you should.

Likelihood to Recommend

David Tchozewski

Director of Information Technology in Information Technology at Kenowa Hills Public Schools (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience