--- title: PowerSchool SIS Reviews meta_title: 'PowerSchool SIS Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 742 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how PowerSchool SIS works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 742 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: Student Information Systems (SIS) url: https://www.g2.com/categories/student-information-systems-sis --- # PowerSchool SIS Reviews **Vendor:** PowerSchool **Category:** [K-12 Student Information Systems](https://www.g2.com/categories/k-12-student-information-systems) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 742 ## About PowerSchool SIS PowerSchool SIS is the leading student information system software solution for K-12 educational institutions, focused on driving your success. Power your operations with flexible, innovative, easy-to-use technology that plays a central role in your school or district. ## PowerSchool SIS Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users love the **centralized information** in PowerSchool SIS, effortlessly accessing grades, performance, and schedules in one place. (8 reviews) - Users love the **ease of access** in PowerSchool SIS, benefiting from streamlined grading and user-friendly portals. (7 reviews) - Users value the **easy integrations** of PowerSchool SIS, enhancing efficiency through seamless data transfers and connectivity. (7 reviews) - Users value the **easy customization** capabilities of PowerSchool SIS, enhancing their experience and meeting diverse school needs. (6 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of PowerSchool SIS, highlighting its user-friendly navigation and customizable features. (4 reviews) - Users appreciate the **real-time updates** that enhance communication and streamline school operations effectively. (4 reviews) - Users appreciate the **comprehensive features** of PowerSchool SIS, enhancing school operations and integrating with various platforms. (3 reviews) - Users commend the **responsive customer support** of PowerSchool SIS, ensuring timely resolution of issues and enhanced satisfaction. (3 reviews) - Users value the **user-friendly interface** of PowerSchool SIS, facilitating easy data manipulation and information retrieval. (3 reviews) - User Interface (3 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **learning difficulty** of PowerSchool SIS challenging, requiring time and training to master its complexities. (5 reviews) - Users face **technical issues** with PowerSchool SIS, including performance glitches and difficulties with the user interface. (5 reviews) - Users find **poor usability** in PowerSchool SIS, struggling with its complexity and outdated interface. (4 reviews) - Users face **customization issues** with PowerSchool SIS, finding it cumbersome and costly to tailor reports and features. (3 reviews) - Users express concerns about the **high costs** of PowerSchool SIS, stressing financial and support-related challenges. (3 reviews) - Users experience **integration issues** with PowerSchool SIS, finding customization and report card functionality cumbersome and inefficient. (2 reviews) - Access Limitations (1 reviews) - Module Limitations (1 reviews) - Not Intuitive (1 reviews) - Outdated Interface (1 reviews) ## PowerSchool SIS Reviews ### 1. There is a lot of power for our school in PowerSchool! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shawn-Kimberly K. | K-12 Technology Integration Specialist - Concentrated in the K-3 Level, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like pulling reports from PowerSchool. I pull reports for our Acceptable Use Policy and Student Tech Info Listings we provide to classroom teachers. It also helps me with populating certain applications through .csv files that can be pulled when an application can't be done through Clever. I can run reports to assist parents, teachers, and administration throughout the year. The interface is easy to understand and the support from PowerSchool is wonderful when needed. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I really haven't found anything I dislike about PowerSchool. It does what I need it to do in an easy-to-understand interface. I enjoy the flexibility to add screens for our parents' use (ie: student tech info listed under our Other Apps for Guardians page). I really can think of anything I dislike in PowerSchool. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is very helpful in searching for specific class/teacher students. Since PowerSchool purchased Schoology and we use both, the use between the two has improved. Our Grades 7-12 are using Schoology as a grade book that syncs with PowerSchool. We are able to run reports for various levels in our school district. This helps with classroom information management; data reports; PIMS reporting; et al. ### 2. Feature Abundant **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jason R. | Director of Technology, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The most helpful pieces of PowerSchool SIS are the ability to compile reports that consist of an assortment of data you may need on your users. There are abundant plug-ins that make everyday use simplified and quick. I am especially fond of the ability to create object reports to my exact specifications with a little work. Also the ability to design reports outside of the interface and upload them. I am also a huge fan of the ability to upload mass amounts of information at once. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The least helpful piece of PowerSchool SIS would have to be the design elements. There is little in the way of design that brings out any visual appeal. Making it appear as a clunky, plain text tool. I would say another issue I have found is that the navigation screens for administers seem very cluttered and incongruent. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are solving many problems with PowerSchool SIS that include the ability to record expenses related to student enrollment and process those within the system. We are also able to utilize the ample tools to provide data to organizations seeking information in regards to grants and student contacts. The benefits of PowerSchool I have realized is that really utilizes all the inputted information to the best of its ability. Meaning that I can pull literally anything from the system and make it in any form. This is light years ahead of our previous SIS and allows me to better perform my job duties. ### 3. Solid SIS with many integrations **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David M. | Manager of Information Systems, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2016 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool is rock solid reliable! We have been running it for about 12 years now and have never encountered an issue with the software that would cause our day-to-day operations to suffer. In addition to reliability, PowerSchool was built to grow. It is a web-based product that allows end-user customization of nearly every data entry screen. There are many outside vendors that have established a relationship with PowerSchool (ISV Partners) that offer other products which integrate wonderfully with PowerSchool. Finally, the database is Oracle and completely accessible to the administrative users to run complex queries on the data. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The SIS is getting a bit long in the tooth. There are other options these days that have a more modern look and feel and offer a few quality of life improvements. PowerSchool seems to be struggling to maintain the dominance they were previously known for. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** If you have folks in the district who are able to customize HTML pages, you will like PowerSchool quite a bit! **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** PowerSchool is our most business-critical system. It contains all student information records, including special education and state reporting data. Additionally, it is the backbone for other vendor software that we are using for lunches, health information, parent and community communication, Clever, and Google Classroom sync. ### 4. A powerful but sometimes complex solution **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan J. | Director of Information Technology, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Powerschool has an amazingly robust SIS system that allows for an incredible number of features, additions, and customizations to be made. There are strong support and user communities that can usually help resolve any issues as well. There really haven't been too many things that we wanted to do within Powerschool that with a little help and knowledge, we couldn't do. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** While Powerschool can be managed on a fairly simple level with help on special projects, the system can get really complicated and deep really fast. For a small school like ours, that can't dedicate a team or even a single full-time job to learning and managing Powerschool, it means that we often have to rely heavily on their support and the knowledge of others, or simply not utilize certain tools that may save work for us in the end, but whose initial setup is beyond our scope of expertise and capability. It is not so complex that a dedicated person whose whole job was Powerschool could not figure it out, but it is difficult sometimes when we lack that staff position. Lots of possibilities in this SIS, but that comes with lots of things to know to navigate it competently. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** PowerSchool has a lot of additional modules that are very useful to schools and fairly competitively priced. You may want to look into their additional modules more to see if one or more of them might be a better fit than a solution you are already utilizing. Single pane of glass is always a perk. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** PowerSchool is our SIS system, so it handles everything from course schedules, to grades and report cards, to parent access to student achievement. ### 5. Streamlined English Learner Information DataBase **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Erin U. | RTI/ELD Coordinator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I am the ELD Coordinator for my district. I can easily add most information for incoming English Learner students on one screen. The database easily syncs with CALPADS. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Program participation is not on the screen where you enter the EL information such as start date, end date. primary language. It requires another step. Teachers do not see the RFEP date on their dashboard when looking at students. It would be helpful if teachers knew how many years it has been since a student was reclassified. Likewise, it is important for teachers and EL coordinators to know how many years a student has been classified an EL. There need to be seminars for EL coordinators specific to entering EL data and how to create reports. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** I think Powerschool is great for entering and accessing information quickly for English Learners. I do however, use Illuminate to create most of my reports that I want to be more visually appealing. If you just need a database to sync with CALPADS then this is great. But if you are trying to create reports that can be shared with parents/teachers or other administrators then using this combined with Illuminate is the key. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our district is using Powerschool to track reclassification of English Learners. ### 6. Long Time User **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John A. | Director Alternative Programs, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** We have gone through the process of evaluating SIS's a couple of times over the last few years. All the sales people will tell you their product does everything you ask about. For esoteric requests, this is often untrue. What sets PowerSchool apart is the ability to customize it, and the community of users that are there to support you as you make changes. There are multiple ways to make the system do what you need it to do. At the simplest level, custom screens can be created with little effort and minimum understanding of data systems. At the other end of the spectrum, new tables can be added and you can integrate other data systems. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** With flexibility comes complexity. To use the system for more than simple end user types of things requires you to invest in your staff to ensure they keep on top of changes and additions to the system. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are a county office of eduction. Our programs are not at all like comprehensive programs. We are able to create custom pages and screens that match our processes. We use the online registration system. This has allowed us to reduce clerical staff. ### 7. PowerSchool SIS for SoCal **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vonda D. | SIS Ananlyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool is a powerful (pun not intended) School Information System. I have used 3 different SIS programs and PowerSchool gives a lot of information to end users. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** While it is powerful with student data, that is also it's weakness. It is not intuitive to use for new clerks. While you can export a lot of data, and you can create your own reports, having some easy to use "canned" reports available to our end users. Also, the fact that there isn't a "parents" table makes it hard to gather data for families. A cleaner parents table would allow for determining who the student lives with. Right now there is "Mother" and "Father" and then Guardian, but Enrollment uses "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" so it gets all mixed up. Yes, there is a contacts table, but it does not operate easily for connecting students to the parent/guardian. Also, to connect siblings, the clerks have to manually connect them, as the family because there isn't an automatically assigned family ID during enrollment. I would suggest PowerSchool look at Skyward's family table for ideas on how to make this better. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** A good SIS is powerful and easy to use. PowerSchool is definitely powerful and has great resources for help in getting started. Once you have it down, you are able to use PowerSchool to run your student info brilliantly. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are constantly running reports to determine the number of students who are either, Sped, GATE, EL, Free/Reduced Lunch, etc. to make sure students are properly place or receiving service. ### 8. PowerSchool SIS has meet our needs at every turn **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael W. | Director of Applied Technology, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 10, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like how PowerSchool SIS has modified its UI. It is very user-friendly and allows our stakeholders to navigate the system much better than in previous versions. I like that administration can troubleshoot grade book issues by opening a read-only copy of an educator's grade book, which truly helps solve issues during distance learning. I like how PowerSchool SIS was able to support the move to distance learning without much effort. I appreciate the support that PowerSchool SIS provides to all levels of users. Their knowledge base and community support are hands down the best in the industry. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** What I like about PowerSchool SIS far out weights what I dislike about it. What I dislike about PowerSchool SIS is that some of its 3rd party integrations apps are clunky and need customization before they can be utilized. I dislike that all other products under the PowerSchool umbrella are not included in PowerSchool SIS without additional cost. I truly would like to see PowerSchool SIS become a fully self-reliant LMS that includes all of its other products at a reasonable cost. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** I would recommend PowerSchool SIS for any educational institution. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problems I am solving with PowerSchool SIS deal with student data. I am able to provide stakeholders information about our student population by utilizing several different criteria that target their needs. The benefit I have realized using PowerSchool SIS is that there are several 3rd party integrations that I can utilize to automate many of my processes. ### 9. Good SIS application, but the training and initial setup and support was very poor. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christina E. | Federal Programs Director/SIS Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool is good for data collection. It has many data fields built into the system that are linked to the various pages for student data. It is a web-based application that allowed increased access for users. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** State reporting is generally okay unless you have an issue with errors. Calling tech support is often useless. You have to know how to program the language to get the data out of the system. The generic reports built into the system are useless. We even had to build the report cards ourselves. Unless you are tech-savvy, the general office clerk will not be able to pull data from the system. The tech support from PowerSchool SIS is hit or miss and often takes days or weeks to resolve issues. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** When considering this SIS application make sure that your staff understands the programing language needed to pull the data from the system. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We moved from a very good system that was not web-based. State reporting was never an issue. However, we needed to move to a web-based solution that would easily interact with other student learning applications. The use of PowerSchool SIS allowed users to access student data from any location that had internet access. This allowed teachers and administrators to work from home or any other off-site location. Additionally, parents and students had easier access to their grades and other student data, including attendance reports. Another benefit is that submitting data to the Arizona Department of Education is an automated process. This was a huge plus for this application. ### 10. Excellent student management with plenty of customization **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Willie S. | PowerSchool Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2019 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I love the ability to customize pages and reports to ensure that we are providing the best and easiest access to data. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Honestly, our only complaint at this time would be the transitions between ownership leading to support that sometimes doesn't seem to be completely familiar with the product itself. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Definitely reach out to others in your immediate area that are already using or have considered using PowerSchool SIS. There are definitely many things the system can do, but I find that very frequently a new employee will come to us from another district and say "well when I was at this location, we were able to do xyz" and what usually is the case is that their previous district actually paid for several other plugins or enhancements (or in some cases even developed their own solution in-house which isn't always possible depending on the actual skills and knowledge of the people in charge of potential implementation). PowerSchool themselves provides several enhancements, but there are plenty of third-party plugins as well, both paid and free. It definitely makes trying to implement something difficult when the person you are talking to isn't actually familiar enough with the system to know for a fact whether it is something provided by PowerSchool or a third-party, or even what the plugin may be called, so if you can get in touch with someone that is actually in charge of the system at another school you are more likely to get the information you're after. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** There are many reports that various stakeholders have needed lately that typically would be a lot of manual exports and working with data. Via custom reports and pages we've been able to consolidate a lot of that data into convenient easy to use and generate pages and reports to create a kind of one-stop shop for various needs. ### 11. Optimal SIS for Schools **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marina T. | Title I Director/Federal Programs Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool SIS plays a central role in our PreK-12 school district. It provides one place to store and access information on our students and staff. We can sync PowerSchool to other programs we use for easy setup. We input grades and see data for attendance. PowerSchool offers many optional packages to help drive student success. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I've used PowerSchool for a long time so I'm used to it. It's hard to come up with something I dislike. We have not purchased options to allow us to input high stake assessments and utilize graphs, but I would like that add-on. We need to be able to create Literacy Plans within PowerSchool. If we could make Literacy Plans and be able to track progress monitoring within PowerSchool at an affordable cost, that would really make a difference. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** PowerSchool SIS is one of the best systems available. They continually adapt to improve their system based on feedback from schools. I would recommend PowerSchool to any district looking for a SIS. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We've been able to see at a glance which students are at risk due to lack of attendance. I export student class lists to import into programs such as Renaissance or Reflex Math for easy set up. ### 12. We're loving it... **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Danielle M. | Technology Integration Specialist & Data Management Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like the intuitive features most and the ability to merge with a number of other tools. I also enjoy being able to easily sync data to educational platforms that our district may be using. This often allows for easier rostering methods, or easier methods when sharing data for student, teacher, staff, or parental contact purposes. It's really a data professional's dream. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I dislike the ease of some of the customization or enhancement features. It can be a bit difficult for those who may not be familiar with coding, HTML, scripts, etc. It would be nice to have some drag and drop or preselected features available for customizations. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Being that many companies that pull educational data are partnering with PowerSchool and use them as somewhat of a guide when creating implementation measures, I honestly think it would be wise to consider this student information system. I can state this with experience working with other SIS platforms and it can be quite difficult trying to purge data when the companies don't recognize the SIS, the layout, or extraction methods. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our district has been able to streamline the amount of, as well as the quality of the data that our district retrieves and pushes out to a number of other software programs, such as those that are being used for educational/instructional purposes, for fee purposes, for lunch, for course/ schedule selections, etc. ### 13. Powerschool review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Suzanne M. | Mathematics TEacher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like a lot of things. I like that I can easily access the email addresses of my students and their parent/guardians with one click at the top left. I like that our school has the capability of putting in IEP documents, thus allowing everyone access and yet still secure. We also have Powerschool Pro, which is accessed from SIS and I like that Powerschool syncs with Schoology thus saving me time transferring grades. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** 1. When in student demographics and I click quick lookup, it defaults to attendance and not the student grades. I have to click Standards Grades and then click Quick Lookup again for the students grades to show up. This wasn't always like this and it is time consuming and seems unnecessary. Also, Standards grades just shows the students schedules and has nothing to do with the name itself. 2. I do not like that I cannot save a seating chart layout from one class to be used in my other classes. My room does not change layout between class sections, however, I have to recreate my class layout for each section each year. It says to save layout but it doesn't transfer to other classes. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I think Powerschool SIS makes parental contact easier for the teachers as the information is easily accessible. The same for IEP/504 materials. Giving the teachers access to IEP/504 information within a secure system ensures that students are receiving the modifications they require to be successful and ensures the school is compliant with the laws. ### 14. Comprehensive All-In-1 Solution **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anthony C. | Student Support Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Powerschool SIS provides you with a seamless all-in-1 experience for managing students and doing quick look ups for information you need. The training and security is very thorough and PowerSchool SIS works with you to ensure you understand how to use the product. One of the best features they have is the quick lookup feature that allows you to quickly access a profile and get the vital information at once. I also like the parent feature of Powerschool that allows parents to be informed of their child's academic progress. This allows them to stay abreast of any issues that may arise in between progress and report cards. The attendance feature of Powerschool SIS is also useful to track it and provide insights into students absences. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** One of the least helpful things about powerschool is the many features that it offers. There are times when I feel like I have to go through multiple forms, buttons, pages just to get some things I'd like. Also, when it comes to running special reports, that takes time to figure out many of the fields that have to be input in order for the report to be ran successfully. It would be nice for there to be a unique dashboard that could give you more streamlined information that can inform you of quick information. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** When considering PowerSchool SIS, ensure that you are able to integrate any other type of systems that you already have. For example, they offer a Special Programs and 504 addition. If you have a program already you may want to look at how the PowerSchool version can add value to your overall software package. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have am solving many problems with having the SIS at my fingertips when i need to look up students and staff quickly. PS SIS allows me to do the basics of searching and I can see that it helps keep things organized. ### 15. Lots of features and very customizable, but complex, not a perfect fit for small or private schools **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael S. | Director of Business Affairs, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like the power that PowerSchool gives to expand their database and customize screens. The custom PS-HTML language is fairly easy to understand and is very powerful. The user community is very active, with many users sharing plugins, customizations, and helpful how-to resources. Our administrators really like the ability to have more access to reporting, teacher data, student trends, and parent access statistics. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool has not been a great fit for us as a fairly small, private school. Many of the features are geared toward large multi-school divisions with state reporting and standardized testing requirements. Our implementation was very rocky - we experienced quite a bit of PowerSchool turnover (multiple implementation specialists, conversion folks, etc) which created some significant challenges. Support has been spotty - sometimes helpful, sometimes very frustrating. I am not a fan of Unified Classroom - it seems to be cobbled together from multiple products, not fully integrated (different authentication methods, separate databases, etc). We are exploring moving to Schoology (which PS recently purchased), and are cautiously optimistic that this will be an improvement. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** I would definitely recommend cleaning up any data you plan to convert *before* engaging PowerSchool's implementation team. This is particularly true with student contact data. PowerSchool's contacts database is complicated and it's critical to have clean, well organized data to import. PowerSchool sells "Keys to Ownership" consulting hours as part of the implementation. I didn't find using those to be helpful at all, so if you can exclude those from your contract for some cost savings, it would be worth it. If you are a smaller school and/or a private school, take a good, hard look at whether this solution will meet your needs. It may be overkill and/or have a significant amount of functionality that will not apply to you (which you'll be paying for anyway). There may be another solution that is a better fit. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our administrators are able to see a lot more information regarding our teachers' information, student data and trends, parent access patterns, etc than with our previous SIS. We are able to do a lot more customization in the system than with our previous SIS (though the customization process is a lot more complex than before). ### 16. Integration is Key! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leah K. | Administrative Assistant to the Principal, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** One of the most helpful things about PowerSchool is that it integrates across the board to make things easier for all parties. The Admin side is great and it talks to Enrollment, which helps to make sure that things are correct for our new and returning students during registration. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** One of the things I dislike is the troubleshooting - it takes a little longer than I would like to have things resolved. I wish it were possible to fix thigns on my end and skip the step. One other thing is that sometimes it isn't as user friendly as I would like when it comes to Admin side and Teacher side - there should be more ability to customize those for the entire school vs the district. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to have all of our information for our students in one place and have it integrated with athletics, clinic, enrollment, food services, and transportation. As PowerSchool has acquired some other platforms, we are able to utilize those, which we had been using separately, as a vital part of our programing. ### 17. PowerSchool Novice **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stephen B. | PowerSchool Specialist, Education Management, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2019 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The thing I like best about PowerSchool is the Customer Support! As a new PowerSchool Administrator for the District, I often utilize customer support and have found that the people on the other end of the line are not only very knowledgeable about the service, but are also very gracious and willing to help. I could not appreciate that more. Thanks **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Again, as a new user, I find that PowerSchool is such a huge platform, I don't know if I will ever master it all. I also have found that there are several ways to accomplish the same mission. Some steps take way to long and I would like to see it somewhat simplified. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** I've attended the Virtual PowerSchool training but would like an in person opportunity. I believe it would be more beneficial in the long run. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It definitely helps us control the data that is being collected by the District and gives us very accurate numbers about our student population. I have found that the Query's are sometimes difficult to collect as not all fields are available for quick export in our field map. Such as Student Emails. ### 18. Great solution for our school! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicole C. | Technology Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The customizability is outstanding and has been very beneficial for our school. Plug-ins are invaluable to us. Also, Powerschool solutions are high quality and higly reliable. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I wish reports were simpler. It is a big learning curve for many of our users which means they aren't quite yet as self-sufficent as I'd like. Also, there is just so much that we can do, it is a bit overwhelming. The support/community site is sometimes frustrating because it can be hard to narrow down to the answer I'm looking for. We would love to see a builtin email/messaging module for communication with our parents and students. However, we have found a good solution with SwiftK12. Just wish we didn't have to pay extra for it. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Communication tools were a huge drawback for us. We need to be able to text and/or email parents and students easily and that is not built in to PS SIS. We highly recommend SwiftK12/Swift Reach as an addon to the SIS. Also Marcia Brenner and Associates offers a number of very useful plugins that we highly recommend. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** There is just so much that we can manage and track and report on - it has helped our school become more streamlined and efficient. The performance and uptime has been great. ### 19. Powering Your School **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The ability to customize your needs adds the ability to Power your School and fueling your information with data. The cloud has long since been a revolution for schools needing options and flexibility to do business in their own way. PowerSchool was one on the first players in that game and was one of the easiest programs to setup, run and host. The incremental backup function gives you peace of mind to know that your data is not dust in the wind if something goes a-rye. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool occasionally misses the mark with some functions and could use a bit of tweaking to user interfaces and design that would make the functionality even better for Schools to use as a Power tool. State reporting is usually the bane of every data managers existence and attention to this area would when over many a fans. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** As the schools grow so can your PowerSchool SIS. In my particular environment I often have to bend PowerSchool to meet the needs of varying schedules, GPA calculations and grade scales often within the same grade level of school building. PowerSchool has often been up to the task with a little ingenuity implied. ### 20. PS SIS review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anton K. | Curriculum coordinator and teacher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The most helpful aspect is that the SIS covers nearly all aspects of need for our school, including LMS integration, gradebook, report cards, as well as all the standard SIS and reports needed. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Jack of all trades, master of none. PS SIS does lots of things, but nothing really stands out as awesome. The UI is a bit clunky and can be hard to navigate. The fact that the regular teacher view cannot access class information for all students is limiting. For example, if I want to look up information for a student who is not in one of my classes, I must use an admin account. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Single Sign On is a huge plus for us...and is something to consider. As we are a Google school, the SSO parameters of integration are important. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** The simplicity of having one wrap around SIS with integration with the Schoology LMS is a benefit. ### 21. Powerschool SIS - A Happy Teacher **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mary M. | Ed Tech Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The robust functionality of the platform. There is so much data that can be stored for students. It is incredibly easy for our teachers and our parents to use. The reports are great as well - our admin team loves them. The scheduling function within Powerscheduler is amazing. It makes it so seamless to schedule hundreds of different students with many different class requests. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The user interface can be a little outdated. On the admin side, it can be a bit challenging to navigate because there is so much information. There are a lot of features that many of our admin team doesn't know how to operate or execute. It requires at least 2-3 very tech savy folks. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** It is very robust and has a lot of great features to make tracking students easy. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping our student records, grades, scheduling. The amount of information that can be stored is incredible. It is very easy to export student records and reports. Our teachers are able to keep student grades and organize their attendance how they wish. They can enter log notes for students for the counselors to see and track. All historical information for students' lives within Powerschool and their data is readily available. Parents are able to view their student's grades, attendance, and more. ### 22. Everything in one place! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kristy M. | Program Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool SIS is easy to use and allows me to pull important student information from one source. I go to PowerSchool daily because it's always up-to-date and it saves me time, especially when I need information from students across my district. I love being able to see student grades and attendance and know whether they are keeping up in class. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I have no complaints about PowerSchool SIS. I am not technologically savvy and PowerSchool is easy to learn and use. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use PowerSchool SIS daily to monitor student grades, pull contact information, check student schedules, and pull reports for ESOL students. This saves me a great deal of time because it allows me to specify exactly what information I need and I can gather it quickly. Without this tool, I would have to create spreadsheets and copy and paste data. PowerSchool allows me to get work done in a more professional manner. ### 23. Technology Director/PowerSchool Administrator **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Denise D. | Technology Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2019 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The ease of use and customization that schools have the capabilities to create. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSource can at times be a bit hard to find the correct article on an issue one is having or instructions needed. I am hopeful that the PowerSchool Community site will address this. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** I highly recommend PowerSchool SIS to any school looking for a high quality product that offers many services. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have been a customer since 2004. The growth of the overall PowerSchool SIS system has been tremendous in the last five years. The many solutions that PowerSchool has introduced within this time have been a game-changer for our school district. We have implemented Performance Matters Assessments, Online Student Registration, PowerPack plugin, and the Health Suite to name a few. These tools have allowed our administration team to stay on top of student performances, attendance, and behavioral issues in a quick manner and have opened dialog between staff and students. ### 24. A great tool for administrative access and organization **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I have been using powerschool for approximately a year now as a school administrator and it has been a great tool for accessing information on all of our students at the touch of a button. I am able too search a students name and quickly access their profile with all of their information. The search capabiliy and the user friendly method for creating reports are both my favorite functions of this app. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I am unsure if this exists because of the way my school utilisizes powerschool but I wish there was an easier way for selecting specific dates as it relates to creating reports. I pull attendance reports quite a bit and instead of getting specific dates, I will get the attendance for the full year. I wish this function had more specific capabilities but it works overall **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am currently using powerschool to help share official school documents with other schools. It helps me pull attendance, log entries from teachers, contact/address information for families, and view class schedules. This is what I am currenly using it for but it has even great capabilities. ### 25. PowerSchool User in NOLA!!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** A Raheem W. | School Data Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool is by far the best student information system I've worked with thus far. I've been in education for a little over 16 years, and we've tried the gambit. No need to mention the rest, we've tried them all and have been using PowerSchool for about 10 years now. And they have great tech support...! Best decision we ever made!!! **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** If I could change one thing about PowerSchool, it would absolutely be the cost for going to PowerSchool University. I learned more going to one of those conferences for 5 days, than I had all that year... Would love to attend again-- **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Buy it..... Hands down!!! **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** PowerSchool solves most if not all of our school level issues. Especially when it comes to our State reporting. It all comes down to a simple extract! ### 26. Constantly Improving **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dana D. | PowerSchool District Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool is the gold-standard - they are constantly working to improve their SIS and meet the needs of the educational community. They offer a wide variety of solutions, and are compatible with a large number of third-party applications. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** They have a good product and they know it, so it's not inexpensive. Training costs are also pretty hefty. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** The help documentation is in PowerSchool is excellent. There are also helpful user groups like PSUG.io that are wonderful when you have a problem or need to figure out the best approach to take to make it work for your particular school or district. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use PowerSchool to collect any type of data that we might need for our students. We are able to create custom reports, lists and tie into third party systems. ### 27. The best tools for the job all in one place **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maryanne R. | IT Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool has the tools and features under one umbrella. Attendance, Grades, Schedule, Demographic Information all right there at your fingertips. Much of it is able to be customized to meet your specific needs. The PowerSchool Insider is a video that airs (usually) every two weeks featuring something that PowerSchool is able to do that is a lesser known feature. I get LOTS of useful information from the PowerSchool Insider. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The Contacts database was hard to configure when it first came out, but it is much more friendly now. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to schedule students from the Parent Portal and that makes our scheduling challenges much easier to flow into our schedule for next year. Currently, PowerSchool is working to make our State Reporting flow from our PowerSchool software to the state. ### 28. Exceptional easy to navigate **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mary C. | PowerSchool Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The most helpful thing about PowerSchool SIS is that it is in the real time mode. When you enter data, you don't have to wait until the next day to see the results. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The downfall is that there are fields that you cannot query. Fields like lunch and EFA; even though I understand why, it would just be very easy if you could query these fields **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Ease of Use **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits are that I can pull almost any type of dat out of the system using a variety of ways. A lot of the attendance issues are being resolved with the reports that are in PowerSchool. Truancy issues are more easier to complete. Matching siblings together is good. And of course the Parent Portal is God sent. ### 29. All inclusive and Responsive Support. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chad S. | PreK-12 Principal, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The support network for PowerSchool is truly amazing. I never have an issue getting someone to help when needed. Trainers and support personnel are former practicing educators and really have an in-depth knowledge of what schools need. The SIS really integrates with so many PowerSchool products that every one of your school's needs could be met. From typical learning management, grade books, and scheduling, to emergency notification systems and lunch account tracking. PowerSchool can integrate just about any tool to help make your systems more effecient. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I would love to see some Google Classroom integration for grade books in the future. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Parent engagement has improved with a robust parent and student portal. All of the information they need to view their child's success is at their fingertips. ### 30. Like a swiss army knife with 1000 blades and tools **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeffrey T. | Technology Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 11, 2020 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Very customizable, provides long term data storage, is very usable in its native state **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** So powerful and complex that it requires specialized knowledge and advanced skills to fully harness. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** The Powerschool ecosystem is expanding, and I worry that one company that does everything loses it's greatness in any one area to have sufficiency in everything. So far, the SIS is still great and hasn't suffered as they've expanded into other areas. For as expensive as it is to use annually, it better remain great. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Long term storage of student data, ability to examine historical trends. Finding student data, particularly after they've graduated, is very easy. In addition, we see a lot of students leave and the return. The ability to find and utilize returning students is awesome. ### 31. The Current Best SIS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel C. | Education Department IT Consultant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Very comprehensive and excellent support. Video tutorials and a large community forum is provided as part of the service. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Setup is fairly complicated, but the support team offers excellent guidance. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** PowerSchool is currently the best SIS to consider. It is widely used and the company is continuing to expand its capabilities. The support offered is the best I have ever experienced after having used 3 other SIS platforms over the past 20 years. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** PowerSchool integrates well with other products used by our schools and is completely web based, which eases access considerably. Our teachers are able to use any device that connects to the internet to perform regular tasks. Communication with parents and students is seamless and instantaneous. ### 32. Fantastic chat sessions for new users **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jennifer R. | Data Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like the help desk chat feature. It benefits me, as someone new to the position, with the ability to review the transcript of the session. The help desk personnel are very intuitive and they assist you in a positive way so that you learn from the session. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I would like to see more training videos offered without having to pay additional dollars. From a user standpoint, I would like to see the system allow a one point of entry system instead of filling out the same information on multiple screens. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Training is very important to using this product. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work on State Reporting. My objective is that PowerSchool create as many state reporting features as possible for consistency and accuracy purposes. ### 33. Overall good, but we're an online school and this SIS is definitely built for brick and mortar. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Clayton T. | Principal, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Importing and Exporting data is excellent. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Brick and mortar focus. We need more tools for communication. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** A robust student dashboard with grades, attendance, AND log entries would be nice. Quick Lookup has some of this info, but not all. Can users customize this? As an online school, "Log Entries", which doesn't seem super robust, is actually something we use and need a lot. Power school has proved to be powerful when it comes to information, but as I mentioned before, it's not really built for an online school. To make this product more online friendly, consider that communication is one of the biggest items needed, and this could be beefed up. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have made some great custom export templates. ### 34. Cobbled together, Countless Owners, Worthless Support, Unstructured Data **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2019 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The size (customer base) of PowerSchool Ability to take action on active selections of students is nice **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Database structure is extremely inconsistent - FirstName in one spot First_name in another and fName in another - everywhere you look things are like this. Disastirous user interface akin to reading the whitepages, but not alphabetical. Online support is split between at least three systems (PowerSchool Community, PowerSource and the built in help. There is no SSO between Community, the latest system they are pushing) SSO is "technically" available, but support cannot find a single customer that has got it to work. It's that bad. The documentation is all wrong, it was clearly built just to check a box for RFPs, but not to actually work for customers. Importing & Exporting data is a disaster. This is the absolute worst part of the product. There are multiple ways to import & export, each have limitations, no one tool can do it all. For example, you cannot schedule an import of a Student Email address. You can only schedule exports using AutoComm, which is no longer being developed. Data Import Manager / Data Export Manager have significant issues as well, and you cannot schedule imports with Data Import Manager. Things like including or excluding a header row -- nope. The options are all terrible - it's as if the person who was in charge of data import & export had never worked with text files in their life. You can't export contact fields as a CSV - you can use a DAT code, and get them in a comma-space format, but not the first column - that's actually CSV. It's unbelievably bad. I cannot state enough how bad data import & export is. **If you want a database you can't load data into, or get data out of -- PowerSchool is for you!** There is no field level history (i.e. who changed this students name, when, and what was it before?) Everything is a "customization" which costs extra, and is unsupported after it is delivered. Trying to get simple things (like a report card) built the way anyone might want will require thousands of dollars of customization - because nothing in PowerSchool is straight forward. PowerSchool's own products DO NOT work together - for example their registration product will register a returning student, and that returning student will end up with a DUPLICATE student number. The login the parent uses for registration is NOT the same login the parent will use for the Parent Portal -- that confuses EVERY parent. If you think buying from PowerSchool means you will have a suite of integrated solutions for your district, you are mistaken. 3rd party products often integrate better than PowerSchool's own solutions. For the size of PowerSchool, they don't play well with other large players - i.e you would expect a built-in export to Follett Destiny (the #1 library system in use by schools) but nope - you're on your own for everything like that. There are other modules (like Health) but they are all severely limited. Change comes slowly if at all. For every deficiency or bug, you are told to make an "Enhancement Request" which will sit for 5-10 years, and then the company will be sold again by then. The code for the entire product should likely be scrapped, and started over - I feel bad for their developers. It's clear PowerSchool has been passed from owner, to owner, to owner - each did things differently, for decades. Did I mention the user interface - while generally OK, once you're in the admin pages, things are buried deep, and in improbable locations. There are zero icons or anything, it's all text, and really painful to look at. The documentation is wrong the day it is written. The formatting of the documentation is awful. The documentation is not helpful, it often contradicts itself. The rework of the contacts database is a mess - before at least you could find who mom and dad were - now the relationship between child and guardian is very muddy at best. There is no support for contact language - so you won't know if Mom is a Spanish speaker, as an example. I see us leaving PowerSchool in a few years - the product is broken beyond repair, try as they may, I don't think it's possible -- PowerSchool will keep hacking patches on, but when the core is this broken, the only way to move forward is to scrap what they have, and start fresh. They won't do that. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** No SIS is perfect, they all have faults. PowerSchool could be worse, but it's not for the faint of heart either. Don't simply think by leaving your current SIS and moving to PowerSchool everything will be roses and all will be fixed - it won't. Don't think that integration between all of PowerSchool's products will be seamless, exist at all, or even work - it likely won't. Most other Student Informations systems have less legacy to contend with. If you are considering PowerSchool, you may want to think again- there are better options without the legacy issues that PowerSchool is destined to struggle to resolve, but never actually fix. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping track of student attendance, health, general student data. ### 35. We could not have accomplished what we have in the COVID year without PS. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The power and flexibility of the system. The ability to talk with other systems to make it a single point of student data and change management. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The system can be daunting to understand fully - you are much closer to the database which has tremendous upside, but also can be daunting. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** PowerSchool SIS and other products in their suite have really made a difference for our district. Installation is complicated and detailed - you need the right people and set of talents available to handle the technical needs of the install process, and you really have to understand your existing processes, and be willing to change those processes if they don't exactly match with the workflow of the new system. Any SIS change is difficult, but the benefits we've realized have been significant in our first school year with it. We started install in March and were live for the opening of the school year. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** PowerSchool has allowed us to replace 5 different systems with 1, and it integrates seamlessly with many outside systems we did not replace, which brings us a level of integration we could only dream about previously. The time savings and data quality that has resulted from not having to data entry into multiple systems has been huge for us. Additionally, the level of data access and configurability allowed us to quickly design and deploy multiple scenarios as we dealt with changing requirements with COVID protocols throughout the summer. Lastly, because the PowerSchool solutions we picked replaced 5 different vendor's systems, we will realize a $10k/yr savings in licensing costs after the first year. ### 36. Good with Limitations **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PS has many features that allow for one-stop-shop data collection for staff. It is the hub for data in our district. PS offers training and is customizable to an extent. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** The bones of the system do not support innovative assessment reporting or standards based grading. We have to adjust how we report grades to fit the system instead of the system supporting how we want to communicate student learning and understanding to our community. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Plan for training staff as well as support, especially as new features become available. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have to adjust how we report grades to fit the system instead of the system supporting how we want to communicate student learning and understanding to our community. It feeds into our other data portal (Schoolnet) but it is one way...it doesn't pull from Schoolnet. We do have most of the staff now using PS as a source of data. ### 37. Full-featured SIS/Ability to Customize **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** We've been with PS since 2007 and found that PowerSchool is a very feature rich-SIS and they add more capabilities every year. We have the ability to add custom fields and pages and have access to all of our data tables. Incident management and health functions help us stay compliant with our department of Ed. We especially like PowerScheduler and our ability to automatically build and load all of our schedules every year. The PowerTeacher Pro gradebook allows us to grade students with both traditional grades and standards-based grades simultaneously and PowerSchool Registration has saved us time and money by allowing parents to register students and update student info online. The PS Community is a great place to find answers and connect with other users. There are a lot of reasons PowerSchool is the #1 SIS. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** My only issues with PS have been some slow response times from tech support. They tend to get overloaded at the times of year when we are all way too busy. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Accurate tracking of attendance, incidents, immunizations, and other state-reportable data. Easy to run and submit state reports. Flexibility in grading. Ease of registration and time/money savings. ### 38. Powerful & Flexible School Management System for any School **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jim R. | S, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool is flexible enough to support almost any requirement a school requires. PowerSchool has informative web portals for students, parents, teachers and administrators. PowerSchool has a wide variety of integrations with other products, some of which are PowerSchool products and others are from 3rd party software developers. This integration with other products makes PowerSchool Most of the program uses a modern user interface. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool's mobile application is antiquated. There are parts of PowerSchool which are not modifiable such as emails that are sent to parents. Customiztions are difficult to maintain over time. Powerschool is powerful and is therefore complex to setup. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Clearly define what requirements and expectations you have of a student management system. Identify what programs the student management system must interoperate with. A full implementation will take from 3 months to 6 months or more depending on your skill. Begin implementation well before the next school year. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Basic school functions such as attendance, membership, grading, course scheduling, reporting, state reporting. We also use it to communicate academic progress with students and parents. PowerSchool is a capable program and has enabled us to run our school system effectively. ### 39. Powerschool review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like how well it integrates with Schoology and the reporting option for individual students. Being able to find a student or teacher with a tech issue when they have an issue is easy with powerschool. The app works well and parents find it easy to set up after a quick tutorial. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Sometimes Powerschool and Schoology do not sync and it causes a lot of havoc. When the Schoology grades and the Powerschool grades do not match up or a grade does not show up in Powerschool, it makes the teacher look bad and causes issues with students and parents that would have otherwise been avoidedd. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** I would recommend that they look into all the integrations to help teacher, parents, and students retrieve information through Powerschool. Like Clever and Schoology. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Powerschool for grades, scheduling, communication and everyday activities. Communication was a schoolwide issue in the past years and since a deep focus on using powerschool reports to weekly or bi weekly report to parents has help resolve that issue. Detailed feedback has also increased with the recent upgrades in commenting and flagging certain assignments as a teacher may forget why a student received a specific grade. Now they are able to leave comments on the assignment for conference purpuses. ### 40. PowerSchool SIS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aaron I. | Technology Director/Assessments Coordinator/Online Education Coordinator/Technology Educator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I have been using PowerSchool for 6 years as our school's PowerSchool Admin. What I like best about PowerSchool SIS is actually a tougher question than one might think because I cannot narrow it down to just one element as many come to mind with this very helpful software tool. PowerSchool offers a variety of attendance features that aid in tracking and even projecting the students' attendance habits (good and bad). I also appreciate the database PowerSchool provides for both the student and the staff accompanied by the demographics of both which are easily accessible to the validated user. These are just a few traits of this multi-faceted software one can take advantage of. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** What I dislike about PowerSchool would be the End of the Year Process as it is ridiculously difficult to execute without spending 4 hours on the phone (minimum) with a PowerSchool Tech Support Representative (which are always helpful and professional) . I also dislike the way PowerSchool seems to be very picky with other software I have tried to implement it with such as Clever. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** When it comes to our State Reports, PowerSchool is invaluable for generating the needed reports for attendance, demographics, schedule requirements, and many other elements of the State Reporting. What is reported constitutes what the school gets paid per students, etc., which is the main part of the business benefit of owning PowerSchool. ### 41. Very good, but missing key components and communication issues with Special Programs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dan C. | Coordinator of Special Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** What I think is best: Combining the SIS with Special Programs for IEP writing is very important to me. Allowing the teachers to see the IEP is important. I use the program on a daily basis and getting a student's grades and attendance quickly is important. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** I dislike: creating reports takes is difficult Communication with PowerSchool Special Programs is not great. When changes are made in Special Programs, it does not communicate that change with the SIS. There is not the ability to include a separate parent address if 2 parents have the right to receive documents but don't live together. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** It is a very good SIS that is customizable to meet most of your needs. The additional modules are good except the communication between and the SIS does not meet expectations. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Most of the issues that I have had have been resolved quickly through emailing support or calling support. The calls are usually quick to answer. ### 42. Great School Suite of Tools **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like how PowerSchool streamlines our processes and workload. Teachers create assignments and assessments on their LMS page- the grades are automatically entered into the grade book. The SIS system populates the LMS with student and demographic information. The LMS is very intuitive and easy to use. It is such a strong program, it was easy to go to virtual learning last year at the start of the pandemic. Easiest gradebook there is. SIS has so much information and so many ways to access and use the information, I learn something each year. The PowerScheduler is very adaptable and gets easier to use continually. And ALL these programs supply the student information to each other- again, streamlined. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Holy cow- the online application program. We have been trying for TWO YEARS to get it up and running. Wasted time, wasted money. We are not leaving PowerSchool- but if the company purchases another company's software, please spend more time making sure it plays with current PowerSchool software. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Hav a designated tech person to oversee the 'back end' of PowerSchool. There is a bit of management that requires a person with a good understanding of school information systems. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have found ways to utilize the SIS for whatever the need is at the moment. We needed a way for teachers to quickly visualize if a student was an online learner or an in-person student. Under the "other information" tab, we created an alert that simply states "online learner" and shows a caution sign next to the student name. So when our students move from in-person to quarantine, we have an easy way to communicate that visually. ### 43. Great at some things/ Awful at others **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Justin H. | Director of Student and Staff Development, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like that powerschool allows for you to pull data from multiple areas. With practice and knowledge, you can access granular data about students and groups of students for analysis. Additionally, it is great at being a place to store multiple details about a student. The support chat is always responsive and helpful, even when they aren't able to assist. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Unfortunately, PowerSchool is so massive that it often becomes hard to wield. 1) There are too many nuanced features that could be automated. -- I downloaded PA state codes either a year or two ago. When I went to submit a report only certain codes pulled. The others did not because the table was not up to date. This is frustrating -- if the incident template updated to not pull those codes, why couldn't the codes update? It didn't even produce the erroneous codes for me to update. Instead, I ended up looking at all of the missing records and creating the multiple state spreadsheets by hand. 2) The chat doesn't always have an answer & the additional help is hard to access - When trying to get support for problems the chat is a great resource. However, when they have to escalate a problem, it turns into a black box. Communication is not always consistent or clear and the wait time is significantly increased. It's hard to know if I should speak to our rep, use KTO hours or just wait for an escalated case. With integrated programs, you can't simply request assistance, you need to go to another department. PowerSchool doesn't know the lottery app info, or Special Programs and vice versa. 3) The system doesn't "play nice" - PowerSchool SIS is difficult to integrate with other programs (specifically other platforms on the PowerSchool menu). We initially switched over to PowerSchool Special Programs so that all of our student data would be consistent and consolidated, however learned after that though data is transferred, there is not a 1 to 1 relationship. This complicates state reporting and other things such as enrollment. 4) Support for unique situations - Powerschool's final area of growth for me is the lack of support within the programming for unique situations. If I have two separate bell schedules the process to have them properly reflected is convoluted. If changes need to be made mid year it's difficult and at the risk of losing critical data. Guides are helpful, but there is so much to manage and so much nuance to each school that sometimes they don't apply. Data validation only occurs at certain levels with staff and students (I can create a student or staff member, but only when I change a field do certain validation points appear). Plugins are necessary to enhance situations like this, which is fine if you find them (level data for this situation) but not necessarily ideal. I'm hopeful our additional KTO hours will help us when it comes time to build the upcoming school year. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** Make sure you have someone well versed in using Power School or be prepared for a commitment of funds for PD and support well beyond the actual cost of the platform. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping track of state and district level data. ### 44. PowerSchool SIS integral to student management **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool SIS is easy to use to manage student data. It allows us to collect and maintain data about the students, schedules, etc in a relatively easy-to-use format. I like being able to retrieve the data I need from one secure location in a digital format. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** While overall PowerSchool is a great system, it's one downfall is that it is not always user-friendly. If it were more user intuitive it would be helpful for those new to the system or for those fluent in the system looking to retrieve information that is rarely used. It would also be helpful to receive a step-by-step of what is new - whenever an update is done. Some of the information stored in the system is hard to retrieve in a reportable format that is easy to access. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** PowerSchool SIS and the associated programs can make managing student data and enrollments efficient and effective, **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** PowerSchool has allowed us to collect, maintain, and store student information in one location and in a digital format. With the ongoing health crisis and school closures, it was an invaluable resource as we worked remotely from our homes to be able to still access the necessary documentation to keep the school running in an efficient and effective manner. ### 45. PowerSchool at Shepherd Public Schools **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Craig M. | Teacher/PowerSchool Administrator/SIS Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** PowerSchool constantly updates their site. I appreciate the updating of the state reporting items the most. It saves me time with the end of the year reports that I have to upload into the state system which is Infinite Campus. I also like their tech support system. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** There is nothing that I dislike about PowerSchool at this time. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** PowerSchool does an excellent job of upgrading its system. I recommend that school have PowerSchool host their server. They maintain the software updates and it is worth the extra money to have them do so. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We haven't had any business problems other than revising our student count due to COVID. ### 46. Easy to use with many available plug-in's **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dawn E. | Technology Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** I like that I can navigate Powerschool and easily find what I need. It is easy for me to create queries that others can use, and update/pull data as needed. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** There are a couple of features that I feel could be integrated, such as Years and Terms feeding into the Grading Terms area. **Recommendations to others considering PowerSchool SIS:** The base Powerschool SIS works well, but keep in mind that to get other features, you must sometimes purchase plug-in's to do additional tasks. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a Powerschool Admin, I am asked to pull various data for systems like NWEA/MAP, Eidex, and other systems. Being able to create my own queries/exports makes my life a lot easier. ### 47. Powerschool Integration with Revtrak **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Allen P. | Director of Finance, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Parents can make payments through Revtrak and the payment is automatically uploaded into Powerschool. This saves a ton of time and effort on staff that would otherwise have to manually record the payment information. It also promotes a real time data environment. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** There is not anything that I dislike. This is a great feature that not many SIS programs can do. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** On the financial side, we are saving both time and money by having Powerschool automatically post payments received on Revtrak to Powerschool. There is also the benefit of the parent being able to see real time lunch balances in PowerSchool once an online payment has been made. ### 48. PowerSchool SIS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeffrey H. | Director Of Technology, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** As a new user of PowerSchool, I like the interface and the ease of menu navigation within the system. The support from PowerSchool is amazing as well. Not just the phone support but the PowerSource Community is amazing as well in regards to support. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** There isn't much to dislike about PowerSchool. If anyone dislikes it, its most likely due to not being familiar with the system itself. Once you learn the system, or at least the basics, it all comes together quite well. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** My district is managing approximately 900 students within PowerSchool and the benefits of easy reporting, grade reports, etc., speak volumes for themselves. ### 49. Learning Management with Power School **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** The best thing about Power School is that it is easy to use and also syncs grades with Schoology. It is way to use and I have never lost any data. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** Occasionally there will be outages, just like with any other LMS. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Taking attendance, inputting grades, and doing progress reports and report cards all in one place ### 50. Overall good experience but with some significant recommendations for improvement **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** J C. | Teacher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2021 **What do you like best about PowerSchool SIS?** Grading is relatively easy. Keeping students informed works well. I like having customizable class pages and the ability to create folders of old class lecture notes, etc. **What do you dislike about PowerSchool SIS?** There are multiple interface problems. One are the popups on the scoresheet confirming edits, which are unnecessary and persist, blocking clicks. Another is the data validation on the scoresheet, which handles too-large values in an inefficient way. In addition, grades are not calculated properly if the default grade calculation settings are left intact. **What problems is PowerSchool SIS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have a single point of contact with students, which works very well. PowerSchool is a tremendous improvement over our previous SIS. ## PowerSchool SIS Discussions - [Can PowerSchool SIS help us manage complex grading policies and unique data needs without paying extra for customization?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-powerschool-sis-help-us-manage-complex-grading-policies-and-unique-data-needs-without-paying-extra-for-customization) - 2 comments, 2 upvotes - [What is PowerSchool?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-powerschool) - 3 comments, 2 upvotes - [Why there's no easy way to find documentation about integration for PowerSchool](https://www.g2.com/discussions/24480-why-there-s-no-easy-way-to-find-documentation-about-integration-for-powerschool) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How can I get other useful resources for transcript template](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-can-i-get-other-useful-resources-for-transcript-template) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [There are over 3,525 schools participating in GEAR UP. Can you incorporate their report needs in PS?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/there-are-over-3-525-schools-participating-in-gear-up-can-you-incorporate-their-report-needs-in-ps) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View PowerSchool SIS pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/powerschool-sis/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-07+11%3A41%3A18+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=7a5a178e-1f47-43ea-8aab-32c8be49fd8a&secure%5Btoken%5D=c8cfbaf51b12afd4c2bb01a1019acb6d812c5e52b6b9e9701fdf8a8b8e4b37e0&format=llm_user) ## PowerSchool SIS Integrations - [Canvas LMS](https://www.g2.com/products/canvas-lms/reviews) - [Clever](https://www.g2.com/products/clever-portal-clever/reviews) - [Edlio](https://www.g2.com/products/edlio/reviews) - [Finalsite School Websites](https://www.g2.com/products/finalsite-school-websites/reviews) - [MasteryConnect](https://www.g2.com/products/masteryconnect/reviews) - [SNAP Health Center](https://www.g2.com/products/snap-health-center/reviews) ## PowerSchool SIS Features **Additional Functionality** - Faculty/Staff Management - Reporting & Statistics - Class Scheduling - Generative AI - K-12 - Parent Portal - Attendance Tracking - Classroom Management - Single Sign On - Records Management - Progress Reports - Customizable Reports - Access Controls/Permissions - Customizable Branding - Skills Assessment - Third-Party Integrations - Online Payments - Communication Management - Contact Management - Collaboration Tools - AI Copilot - Calendar Management - API - Financial Management - Student Portal - Library Management - Forms Management - Event Calendar - Blended Learning - Payroll Management - Student Information/Records - Independent/Private - Document Management - Learning Management - Activity Dashboard - Alerts/Notifications - Search/Filter - Enrollments/Onboarding - Email Management - Curriculum Management - Assessment Management - Gradebook - Course Authoring - Bookstore Management - Data Import/Export - Housing Management - Student Management - Admissions Management - Reporting/Analytics - Document Storage - Electronic Payments - Customizable Forms - Cafeteria Management - Activity Tracking - Facility Management - For Higher Education - Online Calendar - Self Service Portal - Attendance Management - Role-Based Permissions - Assignment Management - School District - Special Education - Registration Management - Parent/Student Portal **Platform Content** - File Sharing - White-Labeling - Gradebook **Integrations** - Integrations - Communication - Data Sharing **Agentic AI - Student Information Systems (SIS)** - Cross-system Integration **Agentic AI - Education ERP** - Cross-system Integration **Platform Additional Functionality** - Cloud - Mobility - Messaging **Core Modules** - Finance and Accounting - Human Resources - Billing and Fees **Platform Data** - Visualization - Activity Dashboard - Analytics - Registration - Atttendance **Reporting** - Report Generation - Report Automation **Agentic AI - K-12 Student Information Systems** - Cross-system Integration - Third-Party Integrations **Additional Functionality** - Employee Management - Generative AI - Alerts/Notifications - Content Management - Client Portal - Contact Management - Reporting & Statistics - Scheduling - Billing & Invoicing - Calendar Management - Reminders - AI Copilot - Admissions Management - Forms Management - Student Management - Access Controls/Permissions - Student Portal - Email Management - Payroll Management - Enrollments/Onboarding - API - Records Management - Electronic Payments - Course Authoring - Curriculum Management - Assignment Management - Transportation Management - Customizable Reports - Document Storage - Registration Management - Customizable Forms - Assessment Management - Online Calendar - Search/Filter - Self Service Portal - Event Calendar - Progress Reports - Progress Tracking - Student Information/Records - Document Management - Class Scheduling - Summary Reports - Real-Time Notifications - Online Payments - Faculty/Staff Management - Employee Portal - Real-Time Data - Attendance Management - Parent/Student Portal - Task Management - Learning Management - Attendance Tracking - Financial Management - Data Import/Export - Report Cards - Fee Collection - Performance Metrics - For Higher Education - Mobile App - Role-Based Permissions ## Top PowerSchool SIS Alternatives - [Teachmint](https://www.g2.com/products/teachmint-g2/reviews) - 4.9/5.0 (37 reviews) - [Infinite Campus](https://www.g2.com/products/infinite-campus/reviews) - 3.7/5.0 (200 reviews) - [Skyward Student Information System](https://www.g2.com/products/skyward-student-information-system/reviews) - 3.8/5.0 (177 reviews)