The Maine Department of Education has selected Pearson’s PowerSchool as a second state-supported student information system for Maine’s school districts.
Districts can now choose between Infinite Campus and PowerSchool, and the Department will fund the software.
Currently, 60 Maine school districts use PowerSchool, and 40 have implemented Infinite Campus. These two products already support more than 90 percent of the local data on Maine students.
The goal of this initiative is to provide districts with more choice in managing their student data and to reduce the burden of data collection and reporting.
Under the arrangement, districts will be entitled to state funding if they choose to implement either PowerSchool or Infinite Campus. The Department will also fund annual licensing and maintenance and support costs for those participating districts.
When districts receive their funding to implement either system will depend on a prioritization process established by the Department.
More details on this offering will be available in the coming months. The initial round of state-supported implementations are expected to begin at the start of calendar year 2012.
Resources and more information
- Brian Snow, Education Data Manager
Maine Department of Education
207-624-6840
Brian.Snow@maine.gov
Much will depend on the service and support offered with the PowerSchool option. For example: Will there be fees attached to converting from IC to PS; Will PS host the database on their servers vs us having to have yet another server at the local level; Will local database managers have access to manipulate table data (restricted with IC); Will data sharing between the state and other schools be as seamless with PS as it is with IC? We migrated from PS to IC a couple of years ago in large part to reduce the admin burden of moving data to state databases. To a lesser extent, but still relevant were the annual subscription and maintenance savings as well as savings in hardware setup and maintenance. This could be a good option —- but before making a decision, you need to consider all the comes with the IC package.
This is not only a very good individual decision but also another important signal that the DOE is in general becoming more responsive to the needs of the school districts. This willingness to consider the direction that the field is moving rather than imposing an often ill-fitting one size fits all choice is the kind of substantive collaborative leadership that is well received. One can only hope that this same approach continues to spread in particular to such areas as teacher evaluation, inter-district collaboration and educational technology.
Keep up the good work.