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The crown jewel of a district's data warehouse must be its student information system or SIS. In an ideal world, the SIS would be the entire data warehouse all to itself. Although it rarely works this way in reality, this should the goal of the district's leadership team and the focal point of the IS director. A good student information system should meet all of the criteria for centralization, standardization, accessibility, mobility, etc. as discussed in the previous section.
Here are some specific key features of a student information system (SIS) that a district leadership team should consider:
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- One Database
One database for the entire district. Idiosyncratic error will find its way into each separate database in building based systems. This makes whole district data and information analysis extremely difficult. Imagine for a minute if Wells Fargo banks allowed for individual errors. It wouldn't be pretty, would it?
- Web-Native
This distinction is really important and its not just "techie talk." What is does it mean to be "web-based" or "web-native?" Web-based products may have web add-on's, but were not designed only for the web. Web-native products were designed, at inception, to be used exclusively on the web. This is important because the web works on virtually any newer computer regardless of the operating system, i.e. Windows XP, MacOS X, Windows 98, MacOS9, etc. The web allows people to work from anywhere there is a web connection—home, school, hotel room, conference, airport, coffee shop, or library as well as on handheld devices like Palm Pilots and other Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Why drive back to school after hours or on weekends to complete your work?
- Learning and Support
When choosing a student management system, it is critical to select a vendor who has a robust and tested technical support model. A vendor should also be grounded in a best practices professional learning model and understand education. Your vendor must be viewed as a partner.
- Customized Content
Your SIS product must allow for customization of content. You should be able to design new data containers into the system. For example, you should be able to input many different types of student achievement assessments into the system, not just the ones recognized by the product.
- Reporting
Your SIS product must have a strong, customizable reporting component. State and federal reporting requirements should be build into the system and automated. However, you will also need the ability to go beyond the "canned up" reports built into the system and have the ability to create your own reports.
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