PowerSchool is the new attendance, scheduling and grade management system that the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) adopted to replace Zangle, the previous management system. It became available for parent access on November 14 and students were able to access the program on November 15.
Teacher Richard Norton stated that because Zangle went bankrupt, SDUSD had to adopt a new system and PowerSchool was the choice. According to Counselor Sheryl Godfrey, the district purchased PowerSchool last year, and teachers were given the opportunity to start their training on how to use the program starting in the spring of 2013.
According to Godfrey, PowerSchool crashed at the beginning of the school year. Since PowerSchool is a relatively new system and SDUSD is a large district, once the master schedule was loaded with all students’ classes, the system froze. “The school district is huge and PowerSchool didn’t have experience with any district as big as ours so perhaps that’s why the system froze. Whatever the case was, the process to recreate the schedules was a long, hard, slow process. We [counselors] had to look through each student’s transcript [and] course request forms again and make sure they were in the right classes, and then somehow make sure the 36 student cap rule was still being followed,” said Godfrey. Another problem Godfrey mentioned was that the system couldn’t catch up with the counselors. “And because the schedules don’t load until the next day, I often found myself up at 12:01 a.m. running the master schedule. We had to put the schedules up on the wall like they used to do it 20 years ago. It was a ridiculous and archaic method,” said Godfrey.
Though the schedule-related glitch has been fixed, other glitches remain unfixed. “One glitch is that the percentages that are shown in the Parent Portal and Student Portal may not be completely correct,” said Godfrey. Godfrey suggested that students and parents talk directly to the student’s teachers regarding their grades if they feel that they are seeing an incorrect grade. “These glitches are probably occurring due to the large size of our district, but whatever the case is, these glitches are supposed to be fixed in the near future,” said Godfrey.
According to Godfrey, PowerSchool differs from Zangle in the sense that it is more reader friendly and runs faster than Zangle. To view grades by specific assignment on Zangle, it was necessary to open reports in a PDF, whereas on PowerSchool, one can remain on the same web page while viewing grades. Godfrey also feels that parents will appreciate PowerSchool more than Zangle because PowerSchool provides more information for parents. “It [PowerSchool] shows more information which will allow parents to know basically everything. For example, PowerSchool gives the exact day and period a student is absent in, compared to Zangle, which only showed the total number of absences,” she added.
Although English Teacher Donna Fallon doesn’t believe that PowerSchool is user-friendly, she is in favor of some of PowerSchool’s particular features. “PowerSchool allows teachers to see a particular student’s entire grade report instead of just the grade the student is getting in that particular teacher’s class. I like to look [at the student’s grades in all of his or her classes] to see if it’s just my class [the student is doing poorly in], or in other classes also. If the student is doing poorly in just my class, it means that they might need extra tutoring. If the student has overall low grades then maybe something is going on with the student’s life at home,” said Fallon.
“While it does seem to work, it’s not a very user friendly program. The long learning curve and technical issues that have yet to be resolved makes PowerSchool unappealing [to] me,” said Norton. Norton stated that the technical issues only allow him to use the system on campus. “Because the PowerSchool teacher side won’t be changing, I’ll just have to work around the problems. If I had it my way we would still be using Zangle—it’s easier and I was definitely more used to that.”
PowerSchool has an app designed for students and parents. Junior Woorin Lee feels that the app will help her succeed in school. “I like knowing that I can access my grades any time using my smartphone. It will help me keep track of my grades and I will easily be able to recognize missing assignments or classes that I need to study for.” According to iTunes, the app allows students and parents to check grades, assignments and scores, standards progress, school announcements, teacher comments, free transactions, and more (itunes.com). The PowerSchool app can be downloaded from the App Store or from Google Play.