70 Virginia School Districts Upgrade Student Data Reporting Systems

• By Scott Aronowitz
• 04/09/09

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As data on student and teacher performance becomes ever more integral to both school administration and standards compliance, schools often find themselves in need of increasingly sophisticated data gathering and reporting methods. In Virginia, this has led 70 school districts to upgrade from an earlier SASI student information system to the newer, Web-based platform PowerSchool Premier.

Both systems are provided by Pearson, with PSP offering advanced school database management features for a variety of operating areas including attendance, complex scheduling, grading, and reporting.

Also available is the newly developed SIF Agent for PSP from Pearson subsidiary Edustructures. SIF (Schools Interoperability Framework) is an enterprise system that allows data from several different educational software applications, such as student information systems (SIS), library automation software, assessment management programs, and even food service management, to be shared and integrated in a common computer language on the same network. SIF Agent for PSP gives the user SIF 2.0 capability and SIF 2.0r1 certification, and it meets specific SIF-based state reporting requirements for Virginia Department of Education. (Note: A zone integration server (ZIS) must also be installed on the network in order to achieve SIF integration.)

"With PowerSchool and the updated SIF component, we are more equipped to meet the challenges of collecting timely and accurate data to meet the state reporting requirements of Virginia," said Kevin Harrison, data manager for Bedford County Schools.