EDLD 5362 Informational Systems Management

EDLD 5362 Informational Systems Management Peggy Hale Section 8014

Week 3 Assignment: SIS Evaluation

Overview This week you will evaluate your district’s student information system. Use the document entitled Evaluation of Your Local School District’s Student Information System (SIS) Criteria and Directions, which is included in this assignment, to help guide your work.

2009 Lamar University Page 1 of 8 EDLD 5362 Informational Systems Management Peggy Hale Section 8014

Rubric Use the following rubric to guide your work.

Tasks Exemplary Satisfactory ê Unsatisfactory

Sources and The student selects, The student selects, consults The student selects, No information Information consults with, and draws with and draws from, overly consults with, and draws sources. from appropriate and general information sources. from inappropriate (0 points) insightful information information sources. (Max. of 3 pts) sources. (Max. of 1 pt) (Max. of 5 pts)

Justification Opinion is shared and is Opinion is shared with Personal statements are No personal of Opinion and supported with insightful, marginal evidentiary support shared with no statement. Point of View carefully selected details. or explanation of thought. evidentiary support or (0 points) explanation of thought. (Max. of 5 pts) (Max. of 3 pts) (Max. of 1 pt)

Complexity of Reflections and conclusions Reflections and conclusions Reflections and No reflection. Understanding reached are insightful and reached are minimal and conclusions contain little No conclusion. and Inferring perceptive. simplistic. or no personal insights. (0 points) (Max. of 5 pts) (Max. of 3 pts) (Max. of 1 pt)

Writing The student generates The student generates The student does not No writing. writing that is highly writing that is relevant and generate writing that is (0 points) relevant, appropriately reasonably specific, but may relevant, specific, clearly specific, and clearly and not be clearly or completely or completely stated. completely stated. stated. (Max. of 1 pt) (Max. of 5 pts) (Max. of 2 pts)

Directions For this week’s assignment, you will evaluate and discuss your local school district’s Student Information System (SIS). Your local school district employs a SIS which handles many of your district’s needs involving the management, sharing, and reporting of student information. For this assignment, you may want to consult with your campus’ SIS manager, district SIS managers, and other teachers who use the SIS. You will want to ensure that the sources you draw from are appropriate and insightful so you will be able to formulate an informed opinion. You may even draw from your personal experience (if relevant) with your district’s SIS. These consultations will aid you in the evaluation of the efficacy of your district’s SIS. Before you begin, here are some factors to consider when evaluating your school district’s Student Information System. The factors below will help guide your thinking: 1. Total cost of software ownership including reoccurring ongoing costs. Many products have various tactics to appear inexpensive, yet have higher reoccurring or start up and configuration costs (i.e. software licenses, training, software maintenance and support). 2. Feature set. What are the base features of the software, as well as the secondary features? Most school districts select a SIS with as many functions built into the system as possible. What functions does your school district’s SIS serve? 3. Texas-specific functionality. Texas is a unique state in that it requires many specific reports and assessments from its school districts. Items such as Texas-specific tests, and attendance reporting require school districts to provide pre-identification files and loading of test scores back into the system. How does your district’s software provide a solution for these requirements by the state of Texas? Evaluate the software’s ability to handle these processes. 4. Ease of use and reporting. With the many data elements your school district is required by the state to track, users need to have an easy and intuitive solution to maximize productivity and use of their time. Staff resources can be overburdened by a product that is cumbersome to use. Is your school district’s software user friendly, offering ease of navigation? Does the software ever require duplication of data entry? 5. Customer support and experience of the support staff. Customer support and service is as important as the solution itself. During the evaluation of your school district’s software, you will need to assess the types of support available: e-mail, telephone, Web and the vendor’s commitment to quality of support. Does the vendor provide timely support with useful answers? 6. Thorough training in the software system. Are your school district’s users adequately trained in the proper use of the software system? In order to ensure that the use of the SIS is successful, all users need to be properly trained on the product. Are your school district’s users trained through the district, through the vendor, or both? Were you trained in you district’s SIS? If so, was the training adequate, and thorough? Additionally, there should also be a component available for ongoing training. Fill out the chart included in this assignment with the information you learn about your district’s SIS. This assignment is due no later than 11:59 p.m. on the seventh day of Week 3.

Workspace Fill out the chart below to complete this assignment. Be sure to address all the items listed on the previous page. The boxes will expand as you type. Student Information System Evaluation Chart

Areas To Address Your Findings and Evaluation

Total Cost of Software Ownership (including Little Cypress Mauriceville CISD chose reoccurring and ongoing costs) Skyward’s web-based Student Management Suite for its Student Information System. Personally, I think this was an excellent choice given the flexibility of its software. Skyward offers a state of the art SIS program exclusively for K-12 schools and allows districts to design the perfect solution according to their specific needs. This eliminates the buying of unnecessary components, yet allows districts to add other integrated modules that are needed. Skyward claims to be the first fully integrated student and business solution, setting industry leading standards. Surprising to me was the initial cost of Skyward, at $300,000 and an annual maintenance fee of $52,000. Included in that annual fee is the inclusion of any enhancements to the product; since Skyward realizes that the software we buy today cannot be the same software tomorrow especially in our ever-changing technological society. It’s comforting to know that as state reporting changes or new features are created, our product will continue to grow and change for the benefit of our students at LCM.

Software Features Set I spoke with our PEIMs coordinator, assistant superintendant, and technology director to gather my information on Little Cypress Mauriceville ‘s (LCM) Student Information System (SIS). Our Real Time Information Portal provides a single, centralized database that eliminates redundant data entry and other upload and download processes. Skyward’s interoperability and advancements in technology has allowed LCM to save thousands of dollars by steamlining our business processes. Choosing the correct

SIS affects every aspect of school operations. Making sure you have a smooth workflow with the seamless integration of the information that flows smoothly through the district is critical. Skyward offers a Base package that LCM receives that includes attendance, census/demographics, data mining with built-in state reporting, discipline, district to district transfer, educator access, Gifted and Talented, Grading and transcripts, scheduling, students activities, Skyport, Pocket PaC, and Vivid Image plus. What is important to note is the flexibility to nix those things that a district won’t use and add some optional features. The optional features that our district chose to integrate were Special Education with IEP services, Human Resource services, payroll processing and reporting, Personnel Profile, Finance, Accounting, Budgeting, Secondary gradebook, health records, food service, Family and Student access, records of examinations, assessments, Graduation Requirements, Report Cards, academic progression and fee management. This is a robust system, that had to be introduced in a systematic way, one portion at a time by an assigned project manager. We are in our second year with Family Access and are just implementing the Student Access this semester. Our assistant superintendent created a committee to receive input from different administrators, teachers, technicians, and our technology department. Together we decided to offer student access in grades 3 through 12. I was able to sit on this committee and hear the collaboration among committee members. Of course, the final decision was made by our assistant superintendent after evaluating the comments. As stated by our Technology director, Skyward uses an embedded web-based solution from a single centralized database in their software application. This type is not widely used by others. She says that most SIS use Oracle, DBII, or mySQL.

Texas-specific Functionality One amazing feature of Skyward is that all of the state and federal reports are built

right in, and conveniently located on one screen. There are no hassles whether you’re a small, medium, or large district. Skyward has an entire department just to work with TEA (Texas Education Agency) to identify new requirements and keep the software up to date. They offer hundreds of pre-defined reports for quick access and a data-mining report generator for customized reports on demand! The vast number of student reports and finance reports are reviewed during the training and implementation. From monitoring student progress, to analyzing spending, it allows our district’s goals to be achieved and met with satisfaction. The amount of reports available with Skyward has increased from LCM’s Electronic Data Processing (EDP) system that was used previously.

Ease of Use and Reporting Once Skyward was implemented, the district hired a PEIMS coordinator whose job is to handle all the trainings and make sure that state and federal reporting is done in an efficient and smooth manner. Personally, I have spoken with her during the end of the six weeks, when grades are submitted and report cards are printed. She is usually stressed until all the teachers and campuses have submitted all their reports. While using the SIS, teachers probably were the hardest to train. I know that many complained about the print queue getting hung up. We have had to work with the company to get those issues solved. Needless to say, I think that changes in our infrastructure will eliminate a lot of these issues. It is just a mass amount of users at one time, trying to print, post, and submit grades at the last minute and at the same time. Our PEIMS reporting has been great and much easier. The weekly file that has to be sent is so much easier to do than with our other EDP system. Our PEIMS coordinator states that the actual PEIMS Submissions are also easy and that Skyward offers more reports than the EDP. Skyward requires less maintenance and monitoring than Microsoft SQL server or Oracle. There is built-in support for auditing, database utility usage, and audit archives, with strong data security, since the database is

integrated directly into the application! All in all, I think that LCM made the best decision when they chose Skyward.

Customer Support and Experience of the An important feature of Skyward’s Support Staff company is that its software is made in the USA and supported in the USA. It was founded in 1980 and has remained reputable to its 1300 customers worldwide. With a customer retention rate above 98% since 1980, Skyward’s software is user directed since its development. They claim to be innovative and rooted in customer needs. They boast about their steps in considering all enhancements that are submitted by their customers. Once the steering committee reviews and approves the request, Skyward adds it to their application as part of their annual license fee.They have re-written their software eight times to gain customer satisfaction. The company has 336 employees with 80 that have more than 10 years experience. Skyward offers unlimited access to customer support and our PEIMs coordinator said that during our first year they were excellent in their response. She would put in a service request and get a response with minutes at the most an hour. She has noticed recently though that this reponse time has extended to a day sometimes. Our support can be via phone or email, but there is a support portal that allows an easy review of past service calls, access to a knowledge base, and FAQ for help. Skyward makes available the use of tutorials available for a visual walk-through of new features that they add. I know that our Network engineer that is in my department, has used web conferencing for representatives to work directly with our system while on the phone. This makes it easy and less time-consuming when you have a major problem in the daily operations of your school.

Thorough User Training in the Software Skyward has expert training which they System feel is critical when implementing a new system. Having adequate training builds confidence, reduces stress, and improves the outcomes of our district’s goals. All of our training was provided directly from Skyward in a hands-on fashion in small classes. They

offer on-going training for non-routine processes or refresher training on specialty areas. Each training session has evaluation that are completed and reviewed by our assigned project manager. What’s great is that training costs are all-inclusive for easy budgeting within the district. I know for our teachers’ training on the gradebook portion, LCM opted for a train-the- trainer module. Several teachers were selected from each campus and met with Skyward trainers during the summer. The teachers were given a small stipend and spent the day being trained extensively on Skyward’s gradebook. I attended this training and then we were expected to become the Skyward Gradebook mentors for our campus. Teachers were given a one-shot training at the beginning of school by the Instructional Technology specialist to answer any questions and give a quick overview of the gradebook. This method has worked well for our schools, and most teachers are efficient now in the gradebook. As far as other administrative training, these were held at times in a web conference. I was able to sit in one of these and realize that if you do not come prepared with questions, your training will not be as beneficial to your particular needs. As our PEIMs coordinator said, you seem to think of your questions and problems after the training when you’re actually working in the system. She said that she was involved in 20 days of training with Skyward. Most of these were hands-on with the representatives visiting. She has been involved in several where iLinc hooks up to her computer and help her go over issues and problems. She also said that her Attendance Registrars were involved in another 10 days of training for attendance, grading, and another 5 days just for discipline. Mostly, our experience with Skyward’s support and training has been positive by most people in the LCM district.

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