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Press Releases  NCS Learn Introduces SASIxp™ 5.0 Student Administrative System System Enhancements Expand Functionality to Help School Administrators with Data-Driven Decision Making NCS Learn, a business of NCS Pearson, will unveil SASIxp 5.0 at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) this week in San Antonio, Texas. Installed in more than 15,000 sites across the United States and Canada, SASIxp is one of the most widely used student administrative systems in K-12 education. The cross-platform SASIxp manages extensive information at both the school and district levels, giving educators instant access to student demographics, attendance, discipline, grades, schedules, health data, immunization history, emergency contacts, parent/guardian information, and more. Most important, its powerful but easy-to-use querying capabilities allow selective retrieval of data, making it far easier for districts to meet growing calls for data-driven decisions and accountability. The SASIxp 5.0 release significantly expands the system's report design and deployment functionality with the new Report Designer module. Using state-of-the-art, Java™-based reporting software from Jinfonet Software, and enhanced with features designed specifically by NCS Learn's K-12 experts, Report Designer gives users access to a wide variety of report templates and the ability to easily create and customize reports. "This feature," said Allison Duquette, vice president of product management and marketing at NCS Learn, "is in demand by schools and districts faced with the need to aggregate and present data in new and ever changing ways." "With the 'No Child Left Behind' ESEA reauthorization, school districts must report to their states on the performance of their schools and how they are making adequate yearly progress in student achievement. Districts must provide similar report cards, including district-wide and school-by-school data. This is a huge job that thousands of schools simply aren't equipped to handle without the help of state-of-the-art student information systems," said Duquette. "Our customers tell us that the most beneficial tool they could have is a system that provides more data and reports, and in ways that will help them more efficiently meet their total reporting requirements. The new features in SASIxp 5.0 are designed to do just that." For example, users can create custom formulas and parameters for their reports, create conditions for the data to meet, select fields they want to display, and even modify the report's font style, size, and color. Reports can include various charts including bar charts, pie charts, area charts, etc., and can even include pictures in JPG and GIF formats. Further, reports and data can be saved for HTML, PDF, Excel, or Rich Text Format output, for more flexible importing and exporting capabilities. Additional Capabilities In addition to its basic applications, SASIxp offers additional modules and software to expand its capabilities across the district, in the classroom, and in the home. Two software offerings, for example, use the power and flexibility of the Internet to give teachers and parents secure access to student information from SASIxp, whenever and wherever they need it. SASIxp's Grade Reporting module enables teachers to enter student grades or automatically post them to SASIxp from InteGrade® Pro, NCS Learn's Web-based teacher gradebook. With InteGrade Pro, teachers can access their gradebook files via the Web, and update their gradebook anywhere and anytime they have access to the Internet. NCS Learn's ParentCONNECTxp® software is a home-to-school communication tool that allows parents to keep track of their children's academic progress online via an easy-to-use, intuitive Web site customized for their school. Parents may visit the password-protected site to review their child's schedule, grades, discipline issues, class assignments, daily or period attendance, skill mastery, and course history. Parents can also easily communicate with teachers via email or receive automatic email notification of unexcused absences, missing assignments, or failing grades. SASIxp, InteGrade Pro and Parent CONNECTxp are part of NCS Learn's xp series™ solution suite, a series of integrated offerings that work together to help schools and districts streamline administrative tasks. NCS4School™ Solution Integration To help schools and districts lay the groundwork for future product offerings, SASIxp 5.0 will integrate with NCS Learn's NCS4School online education community for the K-12 market. NCS4School is designed to unify administrative and instructional functions and data on a common foundation of Web portal technology, accessible by teachers, students, parents, and district management. System Requirements and Availability SASIxp offers cross-platform capability with Microsoft® Windows® or Macintosh® operating systems. SASIxp 5.0 is currently available on the Microsoft Windows 2000 platform or Macintosh OS9 platform. SASIxp 5.0 will begin shipping later this summer. About NCS Learn NCS Learn is a leader in offering a total education solution—proven, comprehensive curriculum, assessment, and data management systems—via software or online delivery. NCS Learn is a business of NCS Pearson, a global provider of applications, services and technologies for education, testing, assessment, government, and complex data management. NCS Pearson is part of Pearson Education, the world's largest integrated education company. NCS Learn provides some of the most widely used and popular software products in the education world: the versatile SASIxp™ cross-platform school administration and student information system; the CIMS® G/T data management system; the state-of-the-art NCS ABACUSxp™ instructional management system; and the SuccessMaker® Enterprise and NovaNET® comprehensive courseware systems used by more than five million students worldwide. Contact Matt Murphy, Corporate Communications Manager
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Press Releases
