Up-to-date information about my child's progress in school, missing assignments, grades on tests and projects. Especially my for high school student, this info can be hard to get from them and so many times you do not know about issues until it is too late. I open Skyward every night at the dinner table and we talk about grades, upcoming exams and papers. She knows I am looking and it helps her to stay on task.

There are so many functions in one place. Check grades, missing assignments, email teachers, lunch calendar, etc. Multiple children in a family can be easily accessed together.

When emailing a parent/teacher, they cannot respond back directly. I wish they could. It would make the line of communication more direct. But, at least they can read the message and respond back by another means.

Overall, it works for what we need it at our school (an attendance management system and to keep track of class rosters). However, I think it is unfortunate we can't use more of it's capabilities and that we use so many different systems instead of it all being streamlined into one. I wish being able to toggle how to print and see attendance and class data was easier and more intuitive.

Our school mostly uses this for class rosters and tracking attendance. For those purposes, it works really quite well. Tracking attendance is quick and easy, you can go in and mark students as absent or present or tardy. You can also click "all here". You can add in health notes about students and other important things we need to know as teachers.

The other features we don't use because they aren't good (e.g. the grade book) and we use it with schoology instead as it links with assignments that can be turned in. However, I really wish we could streamline it and use all one program for everything (learning management system, grade book, attendance, etc.) or that they all connected. Also, while the class rosters and schedules work and can be printed, it is not intuitive how to do so. They are not displayed well or functional for how I'd like to use them. While I like I can go in and see student notes and data, you have to click on students individually which sometimes is difficult.

Terrible. Wasn't even interested in looking at their newer option.

-It is a more reasonably priced option than the bigger players like Campus or PowerSchool. -It is still better than JMC (which is sad). - IF you can figure out how to do things in it and IF you don't mind an ugly program that visually is stuck in 2003, it may work for you.

- Probably the least user-friendly software I've ever used. It has tons of random settings that are sprinkled all over the software and requires a super-user on your team to accomplish even some of the more regular day to day functions. - Reports are terrible. You have to set the fields and ranges and then waste time running a report to see if it works. I can't tell you how many times I've done this and had the system return a blank report because one tiny parameter was off OR the report doesn't do what I thought it did from the title (with no explanation). - Teachers hate it. It's so limited, it forces your district into changing its grading procedures to fit the limitations of the product - Customer service is dismissive and unhelpful.

This is my district's 7th year using Skyward. I am the counseling secretary in our high school and work in Student Management. I am also a security manager for our district. Honestly, when we made the transition to Skyward I was very unhappy. I didn't find Skyward to be very user friendly and I wasn't pleased with the customer support response time. Oftentimes I was unable to find a way to make Skyward do what I needed. However, as the years have passed, Skyward has made improvements to the program, I have learned the system better and the customer support live chat option is a huge timesaver. Now, I really enjoy using Skyward. I have the dubious distinction of being our district's "Skyward guru" and I believe I've learned a lot through exploration in my efforts to assist others. When I can't find answers, I know that help is only a live chat away! I would definitely recommend Skyward to other districts.

Possibly my favorite aspect of Skyward is the ability to dump data directly into Excel. This is a huge timesaver and allows me to manipulate, sort, share and utilize data as needed. I also like the ability to create reports based on my needs using Data Mining.

There are still a few things that I wish I could do in Skyward, that I can't, such as use activity groups to run certain reports/schedules. Occasionally, we experience what I call "Skyward quirks" when something doesn't work right one day, but it works the next. Recently, our library parapro ran a report and new that the info displayed wasn't wholly accurate. I checked her format and everything was good. I printed it with the same results. I cloned the report, changing nothing, and ran that and it was accurate. The next day her report worked properly again.