If your school is larger than just a few students, chances are you have or are looking for a student information system to help manage the information you’ve got. Things like attendance tracking, gradebooks, and report card creation and processing are included in many of the stand-alone SIS packages available to K-12 schools. In almost every instance, though, these features were originally written for internal use only. Teachers and staff can view the information in the SIS and use it to make decisions. Report cards can be produced and printed, but not shared with families digitally. Parents and students rarely, if ever, log on to an SIS to look at any of this information – it is often just a tool school staff use.
That’s what makes a learning management system such a great resource, especially for private schools. Parent communication and satisfaction are crucial parts of managing any school, but especially a private school where parents are choosing to send their kids to you. With an LMS, parents have easy access with friendly user interfaces to all of the most important things going on at the school. They can view announcements, check their child’s grades, see if they missed any classes, and correspond with teachers and staff quickly and easily.
The best part is, with a system like Twine, you can have an SIS and LMS combined into one robust system, making it easier to set up and maintain both internal records and parent and student access. Data flows freely, sharing events, homework schedules, tests, and class updates with parents and students based on class enrollment specified by the front office. Grade, attendance, and report card information is easy for teachers to input, for parents and student to review, and for administrators to compile into reports.
So, your SIS might be helpful on the back-end, but without LMS features for students and parents to access, are you really offering your families all that you could?
At Twine, we are excited about helping schools, passionate about transforming learning and focused on improving student achievement. We are proud to provide technology solutions that help schools achieve their goals. Want to know more about what type of school management software might work for your school? Please download your checklist.