The SIS designed for integration – and achievement.

Schoolnet’s student information management system, GradeSpeed SIS, offers administrators exciting, new tools for processing student course requests and creating schedules, as well as managing student and teacher data.

Importantly, GradeSpeed SIS shares data seamlessly with GradeSpeed Gradebook using an advanced Microsoft SQL database, and it is web-based for minimal overhead and ease of use.

Even more importantly, GradeSpeed SIS is a critical information tool that integrates with and powers other Schoolnet data-driven education solutions – formative assessment, reporting and analysis, curriculum management, district and parent portals and our fully integrated Instructional Management Suite.

• - Powerful and easy to use. With GradeSpeed SIS, you don’t have to put up with complexity to gain a feature-rich and robust SIS. GradeSpeed SIS enables administrators to quickly build master schedules based on enrollment data. Section allocation and student and teacher ranking tools allow counselors and clerks to build schedules traditionally (manually, student-by-student) or use an automated tool that schedules students automatically.
• - Easier management of student and teacher records. GradeSpeed SIS allows administrators to manage student and teacher records using the proven User Management tool. Relevant data is easily entered and accessed. Departments, courses and sections are easily managed, which makes scheduling extremely easy.

Key Features and Benefits

Student Management
Student records are managed with several streamlined and user-friendly pages. Personal information, demographics, program information (below) and history can all be entered quickly and easily; the configurable Student Overview (right) then gives the administrator “at-a-glance” access to all information connected to a student’s record.

Teacher Management
Teacher records are easily maintained (below), and administrators can use the Teacher Course Ranking function to ensure that specific teachers are assigned to specific classes when schedules are created.

Scheduling
GradeSpeed SIS allows administrators to use several scheduling models. Registrars and data clerks can use any combination of these automated and manual methods, so scheduling is more efficient than ever.

Manual Student Scheduling
The most basic scheduling model is the traditional manual method. With this method, each student is scheduled in his or her classes individually.

Automatic Student Scheduling
A student can be scheduled automatically using information collected in GradeSpeed’s StudentConnection online course request module. GradeSpeed SIS will compare a student’s requested courses to the available courses and display the possible schedule arrangements in a filmstrip view. This feature has been affectionately dubbed “filmstrip scheduling.”

Automatic Class Scheduling
Once the student course requests have been processed and approved, GradeSpeed SIS allows administrators to automatically generate a master schedule based on the enrollment numbers collected from StudentConnection. Once the master schedule has been created, administrators can schedule all students at a campus using an algorithm tool nicknamed the “magic button.” This tool creates a full schedule for each student based on his or her requested courses. These schedules can then be managed to allow for exceptions or scheduling conflicts that the algorithm could not accommodate.

Technical Specifications

GradeSpeed.NET is a district grading system that uses a single database. The GradeSpeed.NET system takes advantage of the latest technology available from Microsoft. It is the first gradebook developed using ASP.NET. It is also the first gradebook to support the .NET Framework 2.0. For more information on the .NET Framework 2.0, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/64bit/default.aspx.

GradeSpeed.NET supports your district’s need for security. The system supports LDAP authentication, and also includes a proprietary user management system that allows system administrators to customize privileges for all GradeSpeed users and administrators. The system also supports the use of SSL to ensure secure access.

The .NET Framework 2.0 allows GradeSpeed.NET to run natively in 32 or 64-bit mode on Microsoft Windows 2003 servers. This gives our grading system unlimited scalability. We support network load balancing – multiple application servers can be used to host the application for any number of users. If the number of users increases, servers can be added with no interruption of service. Likewise, with load-balancing, an application server can go down, but the application will continue to run.

GradeSpeed.NET supports SQL Server 2000 and 2005 in both 32 and 64-bit versions, and also supports database mirroring and failover clustering. For more information about these capabilities, visit http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/maintain/sqlydba.aspx.

We have existing interfaces that allow us to automatically load schedules into the gradebooks. These interfaces also allow teachers to post attendance in real-time. Data can be automatically shared with your district’s SMS using FTP, HTTP, or ODBC connections. Our SQL Server database is ODBC compliant. This allows districts to generate custom reports using a third-party reporting package such as Crystal Reports.

GradeSpeed.NET is a 100% web based solution. It does not require any client installation and does not use any java applets or ActiveX controls.