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Tom Lang

Tom Lang has spent more than 3 decades in the field of journalism and marketing, while always having a hand in public education. His father was a school teacher, his mom a school secretary, and his wife teaches high school English and Humanities. On his own, Tom worked his way through college as a school bus driver and today remains closely tied to education as a Board member of FIRST (Robotics) in Michigan. He has worked with high school coaches and athletes for nearly 30 years as a freelance sports writer at the Detroit Free Press, and for more than 10 years as a basketball referee. Bottom line -- help kids grow, learn and create productive futures.

Recent Posts

3 min read

Creating Meeting Attendance Summary by Date Reports in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on April 6, 2022 at 8:00 AM

Attendance can be a complicated process.

Does your school use meeting attendance, daily attendance, a combination of both?

Depending on how your school enters attendance plays a huge part in what you can actually retrieve. Typically for schools to track meeting attendance, the only way to retrieve data is on a course-by-course basis.

However, what if you need to know for a student what codes were entered on a given day or how many times a specific code was entered. Maybe you need to know how many students had more than one, two, or three different codes assigned throughout the day. Getting to that data can be a rather cumbersome process. That is until now.

With the use of our Meeting Attendance Summary by Date Report, schools can now retrieve aggregated meeting attendance values for each student and easily filter the data by date range, attendance, number of occurrences, and even the number of unique codes assigned each day

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2 min read

How to Use PowerSchool to Produce Family List by Street Address Report

By Tom Lang on April 4, 2022 at 8:00 AM

Accessing basic student demographic data is really easy in PowerSchool.

But what about identifying students with the same household?

Again it's really easy if they're in the same school. But what if they were in different schools? Then this can only be accomplished when working at district level.

However, with the use of Family List by Street Address Report, users can now run the report at school level and not only will include students from the current school, but it'll also include students at other schools if they share the same home street address. Making it easy for school staff to identify addresses that have multiple students, even if they are at different schools.

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2 min read

How to Generate Family List by Home Phone Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on April 1, 2022 at 8:00 AM

Accessing basic student demographic data is a fairly easy process in PowerSchool.

But what about identifying students in the same household?

Again it's fairly easy if they're in the same school but if they are at different schools, this can only be accomplished by working at the district level. However, like with our Family List by Street Address Report, users can also run the Family List by Home Phone Report. This report can also be run at the school level and it will include both students from the current school, as well as students from other schools if they share the same home phone number – making it easy for school staff to identify phone numbers associated with multiple students even if they're in different schools. 

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2 min read

How to Manage School Attendance Summary Report in Powerschool

By Tom Lang on March 30, 2022 at 8:00 AM

While schools mainly focus attendance reporting on individual students' dates or codes, there are many times when schools need to look at attendance values from a more summary view.

For example, looking at what codes have been assigned on a period or even day by day basis, this could provide valuable insight as to whether certain periods or days have higher rates of absent or tardy students than others. But getting to that data can often be a bit difficult and often requires exporting individual student attendance records and then manipulating that data outside of PowerSchool.

However, with the use of our School Attendance Summary Report, schools can now easily get a report that breaks down the count of attendance codes by period for each day within a selected date range.

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2 min read

How to Run Meeting Attendance Summary by Code Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on March 28, 2022 at 8:00 AM

For schools that track meeting attendance, retrieving detailed attendance records is only one piece of the puzzle. In many cases, schools have standard policies regarding the accumulation of certain attendance codes per class meeting.

As a result, identifying students that have accumulated a specific number of absences, tardies, or a combination of those is even more important.

While getting to the day-to-day records for individual students is pretty straightforward, getting to that data for larger groups and then being able to filter based on codes or numbers of occurrences just complicates the whole process.

With the use of our meeting attendance summary by code report, schools can now retrieve aggregated meeting attendance data and easily filter the data by date range, period, course, attendance code, and most importantly, number of occurrences. 

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2 min read

How to Easily Create A Meeting Attendance Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on March 24, 2022 at 11:25 AM

Accurate attendance tracking is an important process in any school. While entering the data is pretty straightforward, being able to retrieve that data in a quick and straightforward manner is another story, especially when trying to access data for multiple students, sections, periods, or days. But now with the use of our Meeting Attendance Details Report, schools can now retrieve meeting attendance records for any selected group of students for any date range and then narrow the results by student, attendance date, course, teacher, period, or code. 

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3 min read

How to Calculate Daily Attendance in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on March 21, 2022 at 10:00 AM

Retrieving daily attendance records is a common practice in most schools. For schools that actually use daily attendance, typically through a bridge period, getting to this data is not too difficult.

But what about schools that use meeting attendance. For those schools trying to determine if a student was considered absent or present at a daily level is nearly impossible for the everyday user, that is until now.

With the use of our daily attendance details reports, schools can now retrieve daily attendance data regardless of their attendance setup.

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2 min read

How to Easily Produce Lunch Status Analysis Reports in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on March 17, 2022 at 10:00 AM

Funding is a major concern for schools and making sure they're getting all the funding available is especially important.

One area of particular concern is funding based on a student's poverty status. In many instances, the information is based on a student’s lunch status.

Making sure that data is accurate is of particular importance as it not only affects reimbursement for meals but can also impact funding sources such as title and e-rate.

Unfortunately for schools, this data is often stored in multiple places so making sure the data is accurate is even more complicated. 

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2 min read

How to Generate Lunch Exception Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on March 15, 2022 at 10:00 AM

Funding is always a major concern for schools and making sure they're getting all the funding available is especially important.

One area of particular concern is funding based on a student's poverty status. In many instances, this information is based on a student's lunch status field.

Making sure that data is accurate is of significant importance as it not only affects reimbursement for meals but can also impact funding areas such as title and e-rate reimbursement.

Unfortunately for schools, this data is often stored in multiple places, so making sure the data is accurate is even more complicated. 

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2 min read

How to Quickly Produce a Test Scores Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on March 11, 2022 at 10:00 AM

Districts often enter test scores into PowerSchool whether this means SAT or ACT scores at the high school, state testing scores for elementary or middle school students, placement test data for specific subject areas, or any other test scores that need to be available for review.

PowerSchool allows for the ability to enter this data for each individual student. Reviewing the data by students has always been the easy part. 

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