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Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Overview

What is Blackbaud Education Management Solutions?

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a unified student management system for K–12 private schools.Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™: Gives schools and families the ability to track admissions progress from first impressions all the way through the application process to acceptance, enrollment,…

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Product Details

What is Blackbaud Education Management Solutions?

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a unified student management system for K–12 private schools.

Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™: Gives schools and families the ability to track admissions progress from first impressions all the way through the application process to acceptance, enrollment, and tuition payment.

Blackbaud Learning Management System™: Track students' academic performance and progression with 24/7 cloud access to submissions, assignments, discussions, online communities and tools.

Blackbaud Student Information System™: A source of data and information, ranging from schedules and grades to course requests and attendance history.

Blackbaud School Website System™: It allows users to leverage all the information sources within a school community for website content purposes. It allows schools to update content, change design, add pages, and create new sites with ease.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Screenshots

Screenshot of Topics pages help organize units of learning throughout the year in the Learning Management SystemScreenshot of Blackbaud's education management solutions come with strong reporting tools to get the information you need quicklyScreenshot of Schedule view makes it easy for teachers to manage their daysScreenshot of Blackbaud Enrollment Management System Admissions Checklists help applicants track their progress in the admissions processScreenshot of Blackbaud's education management solutions come with strong reporting tools to get the information you need quicklyScreenshot of Keep track of all the key information about your students in one place

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Videos

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Competitors

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUnited States, Canada

Frequently Asked Questions

Veracross, Senior Systems, and FACTS Student Information System are common alternatives for Blackbaud Education Management Solutions.

Reviewers rate Blackbaud Learning Management System highest, with a score of 7.3.

The most common users of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

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End-to-end solution that's getting better with every release.

Rating: 8 out of 10
December 20, 2018
SA
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
3 years of experience
Our admissions office, registrar, faculty and finance office all use Blackbaud's education management solutions, to different degrees. It proved a necessary tool for de-siloing information across these offices and making the flow of data between these offices more efficient.
  • Moving constituents from Inquiry, to Applicants, to Students and on to Alumni is much easier for us now than it used to be.
  • The tools for students and faculty to keep track of their assignments, activities and scheduling commitments are robust and easy to use.
  • The integration between the teacher gradebooks and marking period grade-entry is useful.
Cons
  • Blackbaud's legacy products, Education Edge and Faculty Access for the Web/Netclassroom, had features that are now missing in the new Education Management System. Custom reporting, lists and queries are still lacking. There are some data points that simply can't be accessed/reported on using the current tools. Blackbaud is apparently working on delivering better features in these areas but progress is slow.
  • Customization, in general, could be greatly improved. Every school works differently, and as an example the GPA calculations, transcript and report card builders, though improved, are still not anywhere near as flexible as they should be to fit the needs of some schools.
  • Implementations are often rushed and the quality of support you get while implementing varies widely depending on which implementation consultant you get. Blackbaud needs to re-structure the timeframe of their implementations to address the realities of K-12 school life, meaning schools should get to keep their implementation consultant through a full calendar year (or more!) and there should be more guidance as to where to start, first, with an implementation when a school is purchasing the full product suite. Currently there is bureaucratic pressure to complete all implementations within 6 months of purchase, which is a really tall order for most K-12 schools.
  • The lack of "data-polishing" features is really astonishing and actually a step backwards from Blackbaud's previous product (Education Edge). This has added to the number of hours we spend making our data meet our standards.
The Blackbaud Education Management Solutions (K-12 ON Solutions) are good for schools that have had issues with syncing data across multiple products. Bb EMS is not well-suited for schools with highly complex scheduling needs or unconventional grading.

Blackbaud K-12 for life!

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 03, 2018
JB
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
8 years of experience
Our school uses ON for our internal and external audience. Our public website is managed on the back end by OnMessage, and our internal community logs in and uses the ON products to access password protected information.
  • Support is fantastic; I love the chat feature and how every time I have an issue someone is there to help me. If they can't help me right away, they always research my issue and get back to me promptly.
  • One of Blackbaud's greatest strengths is that they listen to their clients. Their regular updates and software changes are a direct result of client feedback. It makes us feel as if we are heard.
  • Blackbaud makes a great effort to make sure their software is reliable and easy to use.
Cons
  • Some items of how the software works don't seem intuitive to me. For example, when a parent looks up a student in the online directory, only the parents names' appear, not the students.
  • It would be nice if some of the features of the back-end software had more flexibility.
  • Some areas of the back end are still on the old platform, Podium, and those need to be updated.
I've been very happy using the On solutions. The products change based on user requests and their customer service is great.

Blackbaud to Whipple Hill and back again.

Rating: 10 out of 10
February 17, 2022
JA
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
18 years of experience
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is used campus-wide as our primary solution for managing student information, learning management, admission/enrollment, public website, and athletics/extra-curricular, advancement, conduct, and accounting. Teachers post and students access class materials, assignments, assessments, grades, and schedules; teachers record class attendance, communicate with students and parents, view student progress and permissions/clearances for extracurricular activities; parents view student info, progress/report cards, and submit online forms. Grades and attendance data fuel program to determine and support at-risk students and eligibility for extra-curricular activities. Data also drives review of gender-based performance differences and classroom space utilization. Off-campus tutors access course information to keep in sync with on-campus classes. Resources are posted such as information sheets, how-to videos, school and area resource links, calendars, etc. Athletic teams, games and practice schedules, and results are managed. A school store sells logo'd products. Event registration and online giving is utilized. Parents, students, and employees access the authenticated area of the site while all the public-at-large access the front-face website. Tight integration with G-Suite augments Blackbaud and enhances collaboration.
  • Classroom management of rosters, assignments/assessment, and grading at a class grade book level and grades for report cards. The grading function is flexible in terms of how a teacher might manage their class grade book and support consistency for rolling up grades for report cards.
  • "Pushpage" communications to constituents is a powerful tool for targeted messages and for tracking results of messages read, bounced, opt-out, and clicked through.
Cons
  • In attendance management, there is a nice feature to alert parents and staff when a student reaches a threshold for number of times tardy. It is difficult to do the same for absences ... we have a policy that when a student reaches a threshold of number of classes absent, their grade starts getting reduced for each additional absence. This is hard to track at a class level ... 5 absences could be 1 day out missing 5 different classes or it could be across multiple days and be 5 misses of the same class.
  • Online forms have good basic functions, however, additional formatting control and ability to include/merge more data from student records would greatly add value.
  • easier integration with other SIS / LMS ... like CANVAS and google classroom
Tough question ... direct experience at two schools demonstrate this is well suited to private prep schools. It is not clear to me in which schools it would be less appropriate. Perhaps, a school without a 1-1 tech program would find less value as this is all about the online experience.

Recommend

Rating: 8 out of 10
January 09, 2019
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
1 year of experience
Our organization uses Blackbaud's Education Management Solutions to manage our student and faculty database. It is used across the whole organization. A frequent complaint from our constituents is that they don't know where to find information. The learning management system provides a very user-friendly interface and intuitive design to solve that problem.
  • Blackbaud is very good at designing end-user interfaces that are intuitive. Users can click around and easily navigate to where they want to go.
  • Besides the design, the functionality of the solutions is on point. Almost everything I need to do in the system, I can do. And if I can't, there is an easy platform to request design enhancements.
  • The solutions are consistent as far as usability goes. There is continuity between the different solutions.
Cons
  • While the front-end user-interface is extremely well designed and intuitive, the back-end administration can be tricky. The back-end settings require training and a deep understanding of Blackbaud's terminology and system structure.
  • While the front-end has many features that are outstanding, there are still gaps in functionality. There are several enhancement requests for critical pieces (such as medical information) that are pending in the enhancement queue.
It is well suited for any school or any organization that has a need for a constituent database.

Blackbaud Education Products Review

Rating: 7 out of 10
April 27, 2021
BH
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
5 years of experience
Currently, we use Blackbaud on a daily basis for attendance, class pages, development, and website management. We are very excited to start using the schedule feature for students. This will allow us to track students and classes at any given time during the school day. This is a great feature, but not very easy to get set up.
  • Development database management through RE.
  • User end experience.
  • Online access to student documents.
Cons
  • The admin side of the education products section can be cumbersome to navigate.
  • Everything is built in a very visible block-like structure.
  • Hard to get customize information in and out of BB, most of the time it requires paying for consulting hours.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a very specific type of solution and if your school is very dynamic or has custom needs, the software can be somewhat restrictive. When we went to BB On Products we ran into several situations of a "round hole and square peg" so to speak.
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