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Skyward Student Management System

Score7.7 out of 10

25 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Skyward Student Management System?

Skyward, headquartered in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, offers the Skyward Student Management System, a k-12 student information system which provides classroom tools (e.g. gradebook, attendance tracking, etc), Family Engagement tools with portal, as well as admin and student services task management.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Skyward Student Management System has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 25 ratings of Skyward Student Management System's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Teacher and Parent Mobile Application

    Teachers and parents can use a mobile application to access their students' data and update some information remotely.

    Category average: 7.9

  • Class Scheduling

    Administrators can easily set up and manage class schedules for the school prior to course registration windows.

    Category average: 9

  • Student Data Security

    The system has security checks and technology in place to prevent unauthorized access to, editing of, or leaking of sensitive student data

    Category average: 9

Areas for Improvement

  • Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology

    The student management system can send and receive data from other educational systems with little to no manual steps required.

    Category average: 8.1

  • Platform Customization

    The student management system can be adjusted or customized to fit specific or unique needs of the school.

    Category average: 7.6

  • Community Support

    There are community resources from other users of the platform to help users troubleshoot and optimize their use of the system.

    Category average: 8.4

Reviews

What users are saying about Skyward Student Management System.
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Skyward Usage in Education (K-12)

Incentivized
Evan Shepherd
Teacher at Prosper ISD (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Roster organization
  • Ease of use
  • Ease of grading and records.

Cons

  • Some navigation is difficult.
  • Format of software seems dated.
  • Needs more ability for teachers to be able to customize.

Most Important Features

  • Roster management
  • Grade records
  • Communication/messaging

Return on Investment

  • Some outdated features make difficult navigation.
  • There could be a better mobile app.
  • Ease of navigation on different devices for a more technological world would be helpful.

Students know Skyward is the first place to go.

Incentivized
Andrew Defever
Teacher at Big Rapids Public Schools (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Skyward is the school district's main Learning Management System (LMS). It tracks student grades, discipline, and attendance. As well as many other important pieces of information, including demographic information, IEP/504 information, and any medical alert information. It also serves as a host for communication between teachers/school staff and families, as parents can send a message to all of their student's teachers from one place, and teachers can send messages to students, parents, or both from the messaging center.

Pros

  • Allow custom grading categories with editable weight.
  • Automatically calculate midterm and final grades.
  • Store data for students across their entire educational career.

Cons

  • Integration with outside systems (Google Classroom) can be clunky at times (though it has gotten better with time.)
  • Student search can only be done by last name.
  • Messaging is not well integrated into the entire application, it can only be accessed from the messaging center.

Return on Investment

  • Consolidates grading, attendance, etc. all in one place.
  • Manages data from over 2000 students in 6 buildings K-12.
  • Been used by district for over 20 years.

Alternatives Considered

PowerSchool Student Information System and Blackboard Edutech

Other Software Used

Google Classroom, McGraw-Hill Connect, Google Calendar

Usability

Skyward Student Management System Provides Solid Secuirty and Management for Student and Staff Data.

Incentivized
Daniel CampbellView profile
Creative Director in Marketing at Minnetonka Public Schools (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Skyward Student Management System to manage all of our student and employee data. On the student side, the most common usage includes family contact information, student identification and photos, current courses, photo permissions and emergency contacts. On the staff side, the most common usages are for submitting and approving timesheets, sick leave, vacation and managing tax forms.

Pros

  • Student and family contact information
  • Storing unique data on students (photo permission, classes, etc.)
  • Employee management (timesheet, vacation, sick leave, etc.)

Cons

  • UI could use an update to be more user friendly.
  • Search functionality is not great on the student side.

Return on Investment

  • Solid product for a good price point.
  • Top-notch data security saves the District potentially millions by avoiding a crisis.
  • Eliminates paper timesheets and request forms for the staff side.

Other Software Used

Adobe InDesign, Finalsite Composer, Siteimprove

Skyward Student Management System - best option or not?

Incentivized
Bill BlackView profile
Commercial Art Teacher at Omak High School (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My school uses Skyward Student Management System for grading, attendance, and student/parent communications. In My opinion, the attendance and grading features are worthwhile. I do not use the communications aspect, as we also use Google Classroom and it has easier to use options to communicate with students and parents using its Gmail interface.

Pros

  • Grading
  • Attendance
  • Report Card posting

Cons

  • Does not import assignments or grades from Google Classroom
  • Software times out too quickly, if inactive for a short period of time
  • Should come with "Intro to Skyward Student Management System" video trainings for new teachers or people who have not used this software tool before.

Alternatives Considered

Google Classroom

Confident User

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a music teacher, I teach the entire school population. Currently, I teach 10 classes. My grades are in the following categories, class work, tests, research, and couple more. I tend to put my work into subcategories in participation, and application of skills. What I wish I knew to do was transfer grades from Google classroom into Skyward Student Management System. That knowledge is not intuitive for me. That would save me quite a bit of time.

Pros

  • Stores identifying student information
  • Ease of adding events with editable dates
  • Includes room for comments
  • Computes overall total grade

Cons

  • The ability to transfer grades from spreadsheets into Skyward Student Management System

Return on Investment

  • I use this platform as a teacher, not an admin, so I don't have numbers of users
  • I believe my district thinks it great, because the entire district uses it.

Alternatives Considered

Google Classroom

Other Software Used

Google Classroom, ClassDojo