Put your school’s SIS to work.
Schools across the country count on their student information system (SIS) to securely house their students’ data. The range of data available in a typical SIS is extensive. Most systems include not only students’ grades and standardized test performance but also attendance, behavioral, and other demographic datasets. In combination with one another, these datasets can yield powerful insights school leaders can use to improve student achievement. By placing attendance and academic data into conversation with one another, school leaders can show students’ families the correlation between the amount of time a child spends at school and their academic performance. The message? Get your students to school on time, each and every day.
However, all too often, school leaders have neither the expertise nor capacity to make the most of their SIS. Rather than leveraging the SIS to drive their school’s instructional and non-instructional decision-making, school leaders typically use only a fraction of the system’s features. CTS is here to change that. We can help school leaders take full advantage of their SIS by working closely with our partner schools.
First, we help our partner schools secure their students’ academic data.
A critical task for any school leader is permanently storing students’ grades for report cards, progress reports, and, ultimately, reporting to colleges and universities. However, it often diverts leaders’ time and attention for far too long, forcing them to spend hours and hours in front of their computers rather than observing instruction. Our goal at CTS is to shift this paradigm: we perform two “runs” of grade storage and support for our school partners during the academic year, helping to ensure students’ academic data is preserved for future use.
There’s little room for error when it comes to report cards and progress reports. Our team is familiar with the most popular SIS platforms and can help ensure that your students’ grades are accurately reflected on any student- or family-facing academic reports. Instead of spending hours storing student grades themselves, school leaders can devote their energy elsewhere while CTS handles the rest.
Next, we support end-of-year compliance reporting using your school’s SIS information.
Like storing student grades, end-of-year compliance reporting is another SIS-related task that can consume an excessive amount of school leaders’ time. Federal, state, and local reporting requirements often request data from schools in specific formats that don’t align with the school’s SIS practices. A given report might, for example, request a certain attendance statistic that isn’t reflected in the school’s traditional attendance report. The result? School leaders spend hours and hours manually compiling datasets that their SIS doesn’t automatically produce.
Alternatively, school leaders may be unaware of features within their existing SIS that could speed up the compliance reporting process. Custom reporting features, for example, often allow school leaders to place otherwise siloed datasets into conversation with one another, unlocking insights (e.g., the link between attendance and academic performance) that aren’t automatically collated within the SIS. We put our experience to work to identify these and other potential efficiencies to fast-track end-of-year compliance reporting.
Finally, we help troubleshoot common SIS rostering, grading, and attendance issues.
Troubleshooting rostering, grading, and attendance issues in your school’s SIS can be a full-time job. Daily attendance reporting can take hours if the system isn’t set up properly. Likewise, when enrollment is in flux and class re-assignments are common at the beginning of the year, manually updating the SIS to reflect these changes diverts leaders’ time and attention from more pressing matters.
Throughout the year, otherwise “easy fixes” to the school’s SIS can go unaddressed for weeks at a time, compromising the integrity of any associated data reports. Given the sheer number of school leaders’ competing priorities, it’s no wonder that a rostering change, a quirk in an attendance report, or the enrollment of a new student isn’t quickly addressed. When these issues arise, our team can swoop in to resolve them quickly so that you can keep your focus on instruction.
At CTS, we help schools accomplish their unique missions.
Our team has worked with more than 60 schools across the United States to make the most of their SIS. Your school’s SIS houses copious amounts of data, but there’s only a certain number of hours every day. We get it. Our team can help you make the most of your SIS while limiting the amount of time you and your leadership team have to spend pulling reports, storing grades, and troubleshooting. By partnering with CTS, you can unlock the full potential of your school’s SIS to drive student achievement. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help your school accomplish its unique mission.
