SchoolTool and other Parent Portals in K-12 Education

Parent Portals are gradually becoming an invaluable part of the K-12 education application environment.

I’ve just had my first hands-on introduction to Parent Portals. I live in the Wappingers Falls school district in New York state, and they’ve just launched the SchoolTool parent portal. I love this idea and I’m delighted to see it taking root here.

In today’s feature post we’ll examine some of the features these kinds of tools can offer and take a brief look at some of the products available in today’s marketplace. I’ve coupled this article with a video blog post in which I discuss this application genre and take a look at the web pages of some products.

One thing that I learned in my initial research that was a bit unexpected is that many parent portals are modules within Student Information Systems (“SIS”). While SIS applications have been common in higher education for years now, the applications used in higher ed normally do not include this type of function, which is not surprising considering the older age of the students, and FERPA regulations. In K-12, it seems that ...

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