Apple's PowerSchool 5.0 adds LDAP support, more

Apple's PowerSchool division today announced the release of PowerSchool 5.0, a web-based SIS offering for the K-12 market. PowerSchool 5.0 delivers data access and optimized performance capabilities to address a broad set of customer uses, while scaling easily to meet the needs of growing schools and districts of all sizes. The company says that PowerSchool is one of the fastest growing web-based SIS in the U.S. with more than 6,500 schools and 3,000,000 students using the system. PowerSchool offers a complete view of each student's performance data to guide decisions in the classroom, at the district office, and from home. PowerSchool 5 delivers performance and scalability improvements, LDAP support, new sophisticated reporting, and drag & drop custom reports.

"There are multiple converging pressures on school districts when it comes
to adopting a sophisticated technology such as a SIS: user acceptance,
dependability and sustainability being paramount," said Mary McCaffrey,
President of PowerSchool. "PowerSchool 5.0 was created to alleviate each one
of those pressures and to deliver the highest-performing SIS available today."

Version 5 feaures increased accessibility to meaningful information through a new relational layer on top of the SQL database in PowerSchool 5.0. This powerful new layer provides users instant access to key metrics, not just raw data, by combining logical data sets such as student assessment data combined with demographic profiles. It also facilitates the easy creation of customized reports through a simple drag and drop.

The company has also added features to improve scalability and performance. PowerSchool says that a sophisticated reengineering of the database enables the software to "return information and reports at the speed of thought," while flexible application deployment models allow for district growth in numbers of concurrent users, increased analytic demands, and permits the application to scale to any district size.

PowerSchool's LDAP support allows K-12 districts to help manage security and offer easy password management. The new LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol) functionality enables administrators to establish a single source
for securely managing authentication for all users on the district network,
including those using PowerSchool.

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