Apple Adds 480,000 Students To PowerSchool

by , 12:30 PM EDT, June 25th, 2001

During today's NECC keynote, Apple announced that three new school districts have chosen PowerSchool to handle their student/teacher/parent/admin communication and infrastructure needs. Chicago Public Schools, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Fremont Union High School District have all been added to the customer list, totalling 480,000 students. Apple bought PowerSchool earlier this year, and has been aggressively working to broaden that products' market share. Apple says that nearly 3,000 schools are using the software. According to Apple:

Apple® today demonstrated its ongoing commitment to providing innovative technology solutions for education at the National Educational Computing Conference in Chicago. During the opening keynote, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, announced that three more school districts, Chicago Public Schools, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Fremont Union High School District, will be implementing the PowerSchool® from Apple student information system.

PowerSchool software will enable Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third largest school district with 601 schools and over 434,000 students; the Archdiocese of Baltimore, with 100 schools and 37,000 students; and California's Fremont Union High School District, with five schools and nearly 9,000 students, to perform a variety of tasks ranging from student scheduling to student record management and communication through an easy to use web-based interface. The Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Fremont Union High School District will be taking advantage of the application service provider (ASP) version of PowerSchool, freeing the school district from installing and managing additional central servers and software. With today's announcement, nearly 3,000 schools nation-wide have committed to PowerSchool.

You can find out more about PowerSchool at the PowerSchool Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The Chicago Public School system is a major score for Apple. The 601 schools in that district alone accounted for a roughly 25% increase in the number of schools that are using PowerSchool. Being able to handle a school system that large will be an outstanding addition to PowerSchool's resumé, as school districts traditionally like to use what they know will work.

Also, look for Microsoft to announce some new and "innovative" student/teacher/parent/admin software package in the next six months. :-)

PowerSchool