Skyward Student Management Suite

I love the ease in being able to create categories and assignments with this software.

There are some glitches in the software. For example, in regards to attendance, it is hard for us teachers to adjust the attendance after they have been entered as absent in first period, but they show up later in third period. If they are at school during second period, but are "tardy" to third period, I can't enter their tardy to that particular period because initially they were counted as absent by their first period teacher. This can be problematic at times. The only person at our school that can adjust this would be the secretary. Although this does not happen often, it is a glitch that should be looked into.

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.

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.

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.

The flexibility and multiple ways to achieve the end results we are looking for.

None!