Top Rated PowerSchool SIS Alternatives
It handles grades, weighting, and attendance well enough at the classroom level. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The reports are atrocious, and not easily configured. The way you access them is in no way intuitive. The system is slow to respond to industry change, EVERY time Java or MS or any other part of the technology chain does any updates, PowerSchool is weeks behind. Right now in Windows 10, despite nearly a year of lead time to prepare for it, it's nearly impossible to use PowerSchool, due to how the system is incapable of handing screen resolutions, leading to title bars that are miniscule and incapable of scaling to be read by any normal human, as well as dialogue boxes that are totally unusable.
At the building level, the way you print reports changes often, and making the reports print properly on any of our printers is an exercise in futility. Printing things like report cards eventually works, but then the Cumulative GPA gets figured wrong, as it changes with no input from us.
It feels like we are Beta testers...and have been for over a decade. PowerSchool has never once been a finished, fully functional product, it is always trying to fix things, and those fixes always come late. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Video Reviews
PowerSchool is the best available SIS
PowerSchool SIS was designed to simplify the workload of teachers and admins
Director of Culture
734 out of 735 Total Reviews for PowerSchool SIS
Overall Review Sentiment for PowerSchool SIS
Log in to view review sentiment.
The ability for PowerSchool SIS to sync information to multiple PowerSchool products, such as Professional Learning, Curriclum and Instructions (Chalk), Perform, Records, PowerTeacher Pro, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are so many features, you really should attend a PowerSchool training such as PowerSchool University to get a deeper understanding of how to utilize different features to their fullest. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
* Vast selection of integrations
* Relatively seamless integration with Active Directory and Google Admin
* Intuitive interface for end-users Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
* Has no easy way to differentiate staff/certified teachers, especially for IT management purposes
* No easy support for multi-site staff (you make a new entry for each one) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nothing, from the platform - which we are moving on from - to the terrible customer service - I would never recommend working with this company unless you need to save your job or life - even then, you are not in good hands. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The service is god awful - it takes weeks to get a response if you need to change anything about your contract. They are unhelpful or unwilling to help. They don't escalate customer issues appropriately and it seems like I have 3 different account reps - but only one of themcan help me. The emails she sends me are either auto-generated or she misspells common English phrases and misassociates most of my SCHOOL references with something else..Their reps don't care to understand the tax rate setting process or the fact that tax dollars are being spent on their products. They carefully sculpt each deal to scalp your local school district and refuse to negotiate.
WELL, THAT COULD CHANGE, CONSIDERING THERE ARE SERIOUS COMPETITORS NOW - MAYBE POWERSCHOOL SHOULD RESEARCH WHAT SCHOOLS NEED AND WORK WITH THEM.
Easy to push fancy tech that anyone can push - harder to actually deliver and support a good - complete -product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It is very customizable, either in house (if you can do some basic coding) or through the many contractors Powerschool can reccomend. It does the job but there is a bit of a learning curve. Being able to query student data and spit out what you are looking for is really nice. Thier customer service platform is pretty efficent as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I feel like Powerschool is always aquiring another platform and forcing it to work with the student information system. I feel like this has led to a bit of neglect on the SIS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
PowerSchool SIS provides streamlined communication with students, staff, and families. Users can view attendance reports, grade summaries, assignment due dates, and message teachers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
PowerSchool SIS is a big investment. Time and money should be thought of before making the switch. Parents will have a big learning curve due to all of the functionalities it provides. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The ability to add modules so that subsystems and 3rd party systems and tools integrate and work similatinously with each other makes such a big difference in providing the best education possible to students. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are many different ways to accomplish the same task, so keeping all employees on the same path can sometimes be confusing. Orphan records are an ongoing issue with the system; it is very unforgiving if you create an orphan record. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Daily attendance is super easy. It is very easy for a teacher to update grades as well as for parents to see grades and missing work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There really are no negatives with this program. As long as the internet works it’s great for parents, students, and teachers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Everything is web-based! admin/teacher/student-parent portal. They have great integration with State/Provincial reporting. Awesome User Groups meetings. I'm a hosted client the response is. They have outstanding support and other products added to PS SIS, like enrollment and unified classroom. They also have good approved vendors for other needs like notifications to parents and alerts.
Our district has been using PS SIS for the last 9 years, always as a hosted instance. No downtime issues in all these years, nor loss of data.
Training for admins is amazing. Teachers with really little training can confidently use PowerTeacher Pro. PowerSchool SIS has been an excellent tool overall. New features are being pushed regularly, making it better and more responsive to the province's changes and requirements and our stakeholders (students and parents).
The layout and navigation are clean and user-friendly.
Parent Portal is easy to navigate, and the new contacts unlimited is a great feature and will be amazing when it is all rollover in the system when PS will remove the legacy fields. The Parent Portal can be customized as well. We added an online payment option that helps lots to solve some fees and tuition payment issues.
When our organization implemented PS, they assigned a representative to work with us to set up the system and provide us with all the needed contacts to succeed. We bought a 3-day intensive in-person training for our school admins and trained a district-wide employee to maintain the system and keep up to date with internal training. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Customization is not that easy to do. Pages like demographics and medical information should be easier to manipulate and customize without making costume fields; just re-arranging or hide some fields will be really good.
One more thing I with they have integrated is Google classroom.
Custom report cards should also be easier to solve. It's a little cumbersome, and many districts are deciding to go with third parties to solve the issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It's a great tool to use for viewing students schedule and a way of communicating with parents and teachers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The app sometimes does not work and it takes a while to get it back working. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
