October 2005 — Industry Perspective
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The Evolution of Student Information Systems
By Robert Darby and Tim Hughes
As PCs and the Internet have become a ubiquitous part of school districts, the education community’s desire for anytime, anywhere access to data has burgeoned. Can vendors keep up with districts’ changing needs?
Today’s schools can purchase and implement administrative systems that provide easy and secure access to student records, enrollment, scheduling, and attendance; eliminate the need for duplicate data; easily integrate with other applications; and offer an array of online features for students and parents. However, this level of sophistication did not occur overnight. In making an effort to respond first to the changing needs in the K-12 student information system market, we have learned several valuable lessons.
In the Beginning
Computerized administrative systems
began as huge mainframes operated
by programmers with highly specialized
knowledge during the mid-1970s. Since
school districts could not afford these
massive resources, they had to rely on
regional service agencies to develop and
time-share those administrative systems.
By the mid-’80s, the arrival of minicomputers,
which had the computing
capacity of a mainframe but without
the mainframe’s need for specialized
environments and programming, gave
districts a degree of autonomy.
However, although districts were busy creating internal IT staff and collecting data, neither school sites nor classrooms were impacted by this technological change. “Flexibility” and “ease of use” were not watchwords in the field of student information systems until recently. Furthermore, even though several vendors were offering student information systems, they were proprietary solutions that only worked on particular mini-computers. In short, districts were stuck with all-or-nothing solutions. At that point, we began to explore personal computer base solutions.
The introduction of PCs provided the possibility for educators to quickly and easily access, input, and modify student information, particularly with the convenience of drag-and-drop technology. According to our records, the ’90s were the “push” years for getting computers into US public schools. At first, PCs were used primarily for instruction, but by 1996-97, districts had added 500,000 computers for administrative use. However, users of DOS and Macintosh computers still had to resign themselves to proprietary solutions until the introduction of cross-platform administrative systems.
Adjusting to Current Demands
As the Internet became more pervasive in
school districts, the easy accessibility and
flexibility of browser-based information
systems made them the major players in
the field.The trend was bolstered by E-Rate,
which was created by Congress under the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 to fund
schools’ plans to be wired for Internet
connectivity. The E-Rate program was so
successful that most schools did not have
enough applications to use on their new
systems and began looking for ways to
improve on what they had.
