10 Ways to Use Your SIS to Build Educator Support into School Culture

#Technology

Erin Pinter

by Erin Pinter

Erin Pinter Edtech Thought Leader

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This article originally appeared at District Administration.

Feedback from educators asked to weigh in on teacher shortages has included several common refrains, but none more galvanizing than requesting more support from administrators. While district leaders undoubtedly have several strategies planned to shore up staff support, did you count your student information system (SIS) among them?

Teacher tools

When tools teachers use are designed with user input, they are more effective for everyday use. Instead of adding frustration to teachers’ days, your SIS should make it easier for teachers to keep the crucial data they need without cutting into the precious time they have with students.

1. Attendance strategies

If your SIS isn’t making it easier to take attendance, what’s the point? Think outside the regular role call (insert obligatory Ben Stein Bueller gif) and explore ways to take the administrative burden off staff. Students are used to signing in to all kinds of places these days, both online and IRL.

A tardy kiosk saves time and effort for office staff entering late arrivals and issuing hall passes.

Positive attendance places students in charge of their own attendance records. Kids sign in to each class and teachers review attendance passively rather than taking up precious time identifying who’s in and who’s not.

2. Gradebook

If grades are a necessary evil, then teachers need a state-of-the-art gradebook to ease the administrative process involved. Grades have similarities and differences from district to district—maybe your district has embraced standards-based grading, decaying average, and other new deviations from traditional letter grades. Regardless, the teacher’s gradebook must be easy to access, easy to manage, and easy to share with relevant stakeholders (read: kids and their parents, as well as other staff in the district).

It's helpful to create an interoperable relationship between the gradebook and learning management systems (LMS) to keep assignments and feedback flowing freely while staying secure. Your SIS should be quipped to both create transparency when needed and keep student data safe under federal guidelines including FERPA, HIPAA, and online privacy protection.

3. Behavior tracking

Behavior is communication, but not all behavior is acceptable in school. It’s especially important to track student behavior to identify patterns that may require intervention. While discipline is a component of improving, not all behavior management is punitive. Your SIS should be capable of multitudes along the spectrum of behavior, good and bad.

On the educators’ side, behavior tracking helps teachers keep records and reach out to administration for support. Without measuring patterns and progress (or lack thereof) it’s difficult to structure supports for students who need it and teachers who do not deserve to be harassed at work.

4. Mobile access

Last but not least, if teachers have to boot up a clunky desktop only to access an unreliable, glitchy system, the barriers to successful data administration are too darn high. Instead, ensure users have access to a mobile app that makes it quick and easy to enter grades, feedback, and behavior management anywhere with an Internet connection.

Admin views

An administrator’s most precious resource is time. There are never enough hours in the day, and forget time spent pulling up, running, refining, exporting, analyzing, and synthesizing reports.

5. Dashboards display data

District leaders need data at scale quickly. Data manipulation and visualization can make all the difference for leaders hoping to prioritize support across a population as large as a K12 school district.

Easy to customize dashboards put data literally at an administrator’s fingertips. Live data ensures regular updates so admins know where their finite attention can best be focused.

6. Push notifications

Set up push notifications (and shut off the unnecessary ones) to take quick data on the go through mobile access. All this in an SIS? Believe it. Dive deep into the tools you already use and you’ll enjoy maximum insight with minimum edtech investment.

7. Security features

It’s not fair, but it is true that district leaders often face fallout from a data breach. Your SIS vendor must demonstrate a proactive approach to cybersecurity and encourage you to do the same for your team. Look out for helpful programs, resources, and support as you plan your cyberattack response protocol (you ARE planning your cyberattack response protocol ahead of time, right?). Ask your vendor team for their input, demand they keep contact information up to date, and inquire after any additional fees this may cost—with any luck, there will be some low- or no-cost options to help you keep your entire district safer. After all, it’s in your vendor’s best interest since their name will be tied to a data breach as well.

School to home communication

Engaging parents is difficult. Reaching out doesn’t have to be, thanks to a strong SIS.

8. Contacting families without sharing contact info

Various safety concerns make it unreasonable for teachers to use personal devices to contact families. Your SIS should have a built-in messaging center designed to make it easier for teachers and parents to stay aligned on children’s progress. Interoperability makes it possible to use multiple solutions to reach out to families.

9. Automation

When edtech makes administrative tasks easier, educators can focus their energy on building relationships and addressing students’ needs. For example, automated attendance letters have proven effective at building parents’ awareness of attendance problems before it’s too late.

10. Parent portal app

Did you know 97% of Americans own a cell phone? A handy phone app can connect more families if it works well on a mobile device. Reserving one portal for parents can help ease communication fatigue and get families to pay attention to their children’s progress. Plus, your SIS’s parent portal should include built-in translation services. When parent engagement is the goal, equity must guide progress toward it.

Your SIS can play a big role in automating the crucial administrative tasks educators must juggle throughout the day. However, it can also improve the working environment for employees by supporting better communication, making data easier (and more secure) to work with, and automating processes wherever possible.

It’s time to make edtech work for people, not the other way around.