PowerSchool, a provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, recently announced that it will provide schools and districts this coming school year with two new products: Unified Insights MTSS and Unified Classroom Curriculum and Instruction. Unified Insights MTSS helps educators support the needs of the whole child by providing a single solution to analyze, collaborate, and act on critical student data. Unified Classroom Curriculum and Instruction will better connect curriculum mapping and instructional delivery, which gives more time to focus on teaching and learning. In addition, PowerSchool has announced five updates to current products that support data accessibility, the needs of younger learners, and tools that increase teacher effectiveness.
“We’ve created these products to transform how educators can support their students,” said Marcy Daniel, chief product officer, PowerSchool. “Starting with Unified Insights MTSS, this comprehensive solution adapts to a district’s existing tiered support framework, so educators can better meet the needs of the whole child with connected data, educator workflow support tools, and time-saving integration.”
Moving MTSS and Tiered Support Forward with Deeper, More Connected Data
School districts rely on Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), a framework with a data informed, tiered infrastructure to give personalized support to students. PowerSchool’s comprehensive MTSS solution, Unified Insights MTSS, will securely import data from a school’s or district’s Student Information System, behavior management, social emotional learning (SEL), and assessment solutions and will connect them for deep analytics and insights. This will allow educators to identify and track student needs with an extensive range of inputs, execute and monitor interventions, and review the efficacy of their MTSS framework for continuous improvement without compromising student data privacy. Schools and districts can also leverage this workflow to not only support remediation-focused initiatives and restorative practices but also enrichment activities, such as better supporting students that are identified as gifted. Teachers will also get a full view of each student’s strengths and support needs, including SEL, intervention participation and impacts, and more.
Supporting Student Outcomes with Integrated Curriculum Mapping and Lesson Planning
For far too long, curriculum management, lesson planning, and instructional delivery have been siloed and complex. This distracts teachers from delivering differentiated instruction and personalized learning, which can have lasting impacts on student progress and achievement. That’s why PowerSchool has introduced Unified Classroom Curriculum and Instruction to better support teachers and improve student outcomes with:
- Connected curriculum and instruction
- Improved instructional alignment
- Comprehensive analytics
These new products, coupled with the five updates to current products, that support data accessibility, the needs of younger learners, and tools to increase teacher effectiveness, continue to solidify PowerSchool’s position as the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. These updates to current PowerSchool products include:
New updates to Unified Classroom:
- Expanding Microsoft* Immersive Reader functionality to Schoology Learning to make content more inclusive and accessible.
- Delivering Critters within Unified Classroom Behavior Support to support positive school culture. Critters are colorful animal characters that function as digital avatars for students to enhance student engagement and positive school culture.
- Introducing a new observational assessment tool within Unified Classroom Performance Matters, where elementary educators can observe and record student performance, visualize student progress and instructional needs, view student performance alongside additional data points (attendance, behavior, grades, and third-party assessment scores), and share this data with other educators within their organization.
New updates to Unified Talent:
- Adding new functionality to online forms in the Unified Talent solution to give schools and districts’ human resource teams the ability to effortlessly upload existing PDF forms directly onto the platform for educators and staff to fill out online in their original format, saving time and facilitating easy adoption. Not only will this help reduce time spent scrolling through online forms, but it will also provide users with greater context of what they are filling out and reduces paper waste. This platform will be available this fall.
- Optimizing SchoolSpring, PowerSchool’s national and consortium job board platform, with a new Geo visual interface and a simplified search function makes job searching and applying for K-12 school district jobs much easier for educators and support staff. This new solution will be available in late 2022.
To learn more about PowerSchool’s unified solutions, visit www.powerschool.com, and to see Unified Classroom® Curriculum and Instruction in action, register for a free webinar.
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