PowerSchool SIS review

PowerSchool SIS is the student information system at the center of PowerSchool’s K-12 product line. It holds a district’s core student records, including enrollment, attendance, schedules, grades, transcripts, health information and the data behind state or provincial reporting. Teachers work in the PowerTeacher Pro gradebook, office staff work in the admin pages, and families check grades and attendance in the PowerSchool Mobile app or the web portal. Districts across the US and Canada run it, and North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction uses it statewide for public schools.

Who it’s for

PowerSchool SIS suits districts with a dedicated SIS administrator or data team. The system can do almost anything a US or Canadian district needs, but someone has to set up calendars, attendance codes, grade scales, report card templates and state reporting fields, and check them again every year. A small charter or private school with one office manager can run it, but should expect to rely on PowerSchool support or a consultant for the harder jobs.

If you already use other PowerSchool products, such as Schoology for coursework, the SIS is the obvious hub. PowerSchool sells them as connected products, which saves you building and maintaining a sync between two vendors.

What it does well

PowerSchool’s own feature sheet covers areas that smaller systems skip. The health module, for example, records immunizations, medication tracking and inventory, screenings and a nurse’s daily log. The scheduling tools include an automatic scheduler for building the master schedule, online course requests and walk-in scheduling for the first week of term, when students queue at the counselor’s office to change classes.

Grading handles both traditional and standards-based grading, with school-defined GPA calculations, class rank, honor roll, transcripts and graduation progress tracking. PowerTeacher Pro gives teachers seating charts, a comment bank, score copying and paperless grade verification, so report card week does not depend on paper sign-off sheets.

Customization is the other strength. Districts can add fields and tables, modify system pages, build new pages and install plugins that other districts share. PowerSchool supports Ed-Fi, SIF and OneRoster, which matters when you push rosters to an LMS or send data to a state system. The user community is large, so when you hit an odd state reporting rule, another district has often already posted a fix in the forums.

Where it falls short

All that flexibility turns into work. Your team has to retest every custom page and plugin after updates, and a district that customized heavily a decade ago may find that nobody remembers why a field exists. New staff need proper training before they touch scheduling or state reporting.

The interface is uneven. PowerSchool has grown by buying other companies, and pages in different modules look and behave differently. Teachers who move between the gradebook, attendance screens and add-on products notice it, and so does the help desk.

Several things people assume come with the SIS are separate products with separate contracts. PowerSchool sells online enrollment, special education case management and its LMS on their own. Check exactly what is in your quote before you compare it with a broader system such as Infinite Campus.

Pricing

PowerSchool does not publish prices. Districts get a quote, and PowerSchool often sells the SIS in a bundle with its other products. Ask for each product on its own line, and ask what implementation, data migration, training and annual support cost, so you can compare the bundle with buying the parts elsewhere. Our guide to the total cost of school software lists the costs that tend to be missing from a first quote.

Privacy and data

PowerSchool had a major breach in late 2024. An attacker used a compromised credential to log in to PowerSource, the company’s customer support portal, and exported data from the SIS databases of many districts. PowerSchool says it became aware of the incident on December 28, 2024, and districts began notifying families in January 2025. The data varied by district. It included names and contact details, and for some districts more sensitive fields such as medical information and Social Security numbers. PowerSchool told K-12 Dive that the support portal did not have multifactor authentication. In Canada, the federal Privacy Commissioner closed its investigation in July 2025 after PowerSchool signed a letter committing to specific security improvements.

PowerSchool’s SIS feature sheet lists ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification, role-based security and field-level security. If you use PowerSchool now, ask for the current certificates, ask how support staff reach your data, and confirm that multifactor authentication is on for every account that can see student records. Our student data privacy checklist has more questions to put to any SIS vendor.

Verdict

PowerSchool SIS has more modules than most districts will use, and its scheduling, grading and reporting tools work well in large, complex districts. The price is setup effort, an inconsistent interface and a security record that districts should question closely after the 2024 breach. Small schools without an SIS administrator, and districts that want one consistent interface, should look at Infinite Campus or the other options in our student information system rankings.

See the best PowerSchool SIS alternatives