PowerSchool Has Unified the Classroom to Simplify Teaching and Learning

When I started in education technology 13 years ago, classroom technology was a nice-to-have. As with all industries, there were some districts on the cutting edge with one-to-one computing programs and a 100% digitally accessible curriculum. Most were still determining the best mix of infrastructure and software to support their teaching and learning style. Today looks very different.

Educators have always adapted to a changing world by adopting new and innovative ways to keep the learning going. Over the past year, for example, it became clear that teachers needed to utilize distance-learning technology.  In response, districts have recognized the need to empower educators with digital technology that works consistently. In other words, the Wild West days of allowing different teachers, schools, or groups to select niche technology solutions that don’t work cohesively for educators and students is coming to an end.

And that makes sense. District administrators don’t want to be interoperability experts. Neither do they want to manage disparate systems, train people on multiple platforms, nor pull together disconnected data to improve student performance.

That’s why we’ve been building Unified Classroom®—not as a secondary product or a temporary solution to mitigate COVID disruptions, but instead as a comprehensive solution that simplifies teaching and learning. PowerSchool’s vision for a unified classroom was defined years ago and continues to evolve to best support teachers and students around the world.

Creating the Unified Classroom

PowerSchool has been on a journey to assemble the most comprehensive suite of classroom technology. That has included acquiring some of the most robust technology platforms and working to integrate them with our best-in–class solutions. We have now reached a new milestone on that journey. We have added industry-leading technology to the PowerSchool family—Unified Classroom® Schoology Learning, Unified Classroom® Performance Matters, and Unified Insights™, to name a few—and combined them with our market-leading SIS to offer a solution that reaches far beyond solutions previously provided by education technology.

PowerSchool has unified the classroom with a singular solution that connects learning tools, student performance data, and special programs information to help educators deliver personalized, whole-child instruction. These connections bring together the critical teaching and learning tools that educators, students, and families need in one place.

As countless districts anticipate additional federal funding as they gear up for the 2021-2022 school year, our goal is to provide a reliable, interoperable framework for teaching and learning, no matter what challenges the future holds.

This investment continues to this day. Our 2021 product roadmap is dedicated to enhancing the interoperability of our education technology and providing differentiated solutions that meet the heart of teachers’ needs. This includes SIS-LMS integrations that support attendance and the ability to pass back standard grades.

Continue the learning with tools that support live instruction, flipped classrooms, and hybrid education

PowerSchool SIS Integration Supports Back-To-School 2021-22

Information exchange takes away the legwork of sharing student data between systems. A recent poll shows that 89% of teachers agree that they want data that informs them which of their students are furthest behind so that they can provide targeted interventions and get them back on track for success.¹ With interoperable classroom tools, grades and attendance sync directly between Unified Classroom® Schoology Learning and PowerSchool SIS. That means it’s simpler for educators to provide students with data-driven instruction that is differentiated, interactive, and (most of all) based on their unique needs.

With Unified Classroom® and PowerSchool SIS, educators are able to:

• Experience a unified user experience with connected assessment data, special programs information to support students with unique learning needs, social and emotional learning (SEL) survey results, and demographic data alongside the leading K-12 education-focused learning management system (LMS). This provides teachers time back and a simpler, more complete approach to understanding and addressing the needs of the whole child
• Simplified data management, thanks to integrated attendance collection, student alerts including medical alerts and special programs status, traditional and standards-grade pass back, and the ability to have class rosters flow throughout an organization’s PowerSchool ecosystem. All data becomes more centralized, secure, accurate, and accessible for users based on roles and permissions

• Reinforced accountability throughout their school or district, thanks to timely alerts, early-warning notifications, and intuitive reporting for all students in a single solution

Enter your PowerSchool SIS attendance in Unified Classroom®

Agnostic Integration to Help You Connect

When all of your systems work together, you get a smooth, simple workflow that improves the teaching and learning experience. Unified Classroom® Schoology Learning and PowerSchool Performance Matters integrate to streamline your ability to view performance on classroom assessments alongside additional data points, such as:

• Local benchmarks
• Third-party assessments (state tests, diagnostic exams, SAT/ACT, etc.)
• Attendance
• Behavior
• Social-emotional learning data

Learning gains with clearer visibility to unfinished learning

Students benefit from simplified access to their district common assessments—which teachers create in PowerSchool Performance Matters—directly within their course materials in the LMS.

Additionally, PowerSchool Schoology Learning provides OneRoster integration to any SIS that supports this standard specification for securely sharing data. OneRoster standardizes data sharing between your SIS and your LMS and allows information to be securely shared between the two platforms, such as:

• Roster Data—Staff, students, courses, and sections connect from the SIS to the LMS
• Performance Data—Grade passback of assignments and scores from the LMS to the gradebook in the SIS

Finally, PowerSchool also recently signed the IMS Global Standards First Pledge. We recognize interoperability standards are needed to fully enable the secure, plug–and–play educational ecosystem that districts need to support teachers in creating personalized learning experiences for students.

Scalability to Help You Grow

PowerSchool’s technology provides scalability and support to match the increased demand for remote and blended learning. Unified Classroom® provides:

• Greater Capacity—We’ve optimized Schoology Learning’s infrastructure, eliminated potential bottlenecks that could impact system performance, and tuned up all our components’ auto-scaling logic (a mechanism we use to add capacity to the system as more users access the platform)
• Real-time Active Monitoring—As we’ve increased system monitoring and observability, districts get our operational teams’ deeper insight into how specific parts of the system perform against benchmarks. This allows us to know sooner if parts of the system could impact overall performance
• Upgraded Communications—New workflows and communication procedures ensure that our operational teams can quickly respond to issues that might arise
• Significant Increased Investment—We’ve increased our staffing for services, implementation, operations, and support by over 150%
• Expanded Community Support—Educators can explore our teacher community filled with Schoology Learning and Performance Matters experts, mentors, and content to help successfully onboard new teachers to the platforms

PowerSchool’s Continued Commitment to Moving Education Forward

PowerSchool is committed to simplifying teaching and learning workflows to ensure that teachers and students are better supported with the tools they need to increase focus on high-quality whole-child instruction. We will continue to provide intuitive progress-monitoring tools that help teachers make timely adjustments based on students’ needs. We take our commitments exceptionally seriously because our ability to unify the classroom has a direct impact on the lives of millions of students around the world.

With Unified Classroom®, schools and districts have the tools they need to support learning wherever it happens, thanks to ever-evolving technology designed to accelerate learning gains for years to come.

Resources

1. https://dataqualitycampaign.org/resource/2020-teacher-poll/