Excellent Education Management Tool

Over Skyward provides teachers, students and administrators with up-to-date, accessible and easy to understand grades, disciplinary reports, and academic history. With very little training, I was able to navigate and operate the system within days.

Pros

This software is easily navigable for educators. I can input grades, edit assignments and change due dates with only the click of a button. Its integration with Google Calendar allows my students to keep track of due dates, as well.

Cons

Skyward has pre-set grading periods, but as a teacher there are still intermittent periods (6 week grade period) where I need to manually input each student's grade. This seems an unnecessarily arduous task.

QMLATIV is the most intuitive software!

We're using it both Business and Student and it's just easy to use.

Pros

I have experience with pretty much every SIS in Wisconsin and Qmlativ is definitely the easiest to use. The intuitive nature of it makes it easy to get stuff done. The technical support is the best I've seen in the industry. Everyone is very knowledgeable and is kind.

Cons

I wish Skyward Business and Student are merged, but I know they're working on that. Still would be nice!

Easy to track students' grades

Skyward makes it very easy for parents to oversee their children's attendance and grades, access their schedules, receive announcements from the school, etc. It's a wonderful portal that helps parents to monitor their kids' education and take proactive steps to stay involved.

Pros

Skyward makes it easy for parents to track their kids' attendance and grades. This has been especially important during the pandemic because the kids have been learning from home for more than a year. When my stepdaughter started slacking off and not logging in to her synchronous classes, we found out very quickly by tracking her attendance through Skyward. This allowed us to address the issue right away, before she missed tons of class and fell really far behind. Similarly, it is easy to see the kids' grades. I know right away if assignments are missing, if they turn in incomplete work, or if they don't do well on a project/test/homework. That way, we can work with them to improve their grades right away rather than waiting until they've fallen so far behind that they can't bring their grades up.

Cons

It isn't always intuitive to use. When you click on "Gradebook," you get an error message that says "Not available when viewing all students." The first time I logged in, I had a hard time figuring out how to view the kids' grades. The menu to select a specific student is hidden at the top of the screen, whereas all the other menus are on the left. It took me forever to find it. Once you figure it out, it's easy -- but the first time, I struggled when trying to access grades.

Stuck in 2003; Avoid.

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

Pros

-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.

Cons

- 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.

Skyward requires Skills

Everytime we feel as though we need a retraining between the quarters to use it - to find the button or link that we need to report. It is easy to keep grades, but difficult to find the report, build a template or transfer grades between quarters/semesters. There is lots of keying in on the teachers side. There have been other report managing systems that I have used that have been a lot nicer for data keeping.

Pros

We use this software daily and I like the idea of a gradebook that is on-line to report grades virtually, especially with the changes in our world.

Cons

Difficult to use, not really user friendly (or teacher friendly rather) for the lower grades. I found that many upper elementary, middle school or high school enjoyed it and used it in so many other ways. We currently only use it to report attendance, grades and scan school entry documents. I am sure there are many other features that this platform offers.