Pearson Launches Chancery SMS Version 7.3

New Version Includes Academic Planner, a New Time-Saving Tool for School Counselors.

Rancho Cordova, CA,: April 6, 2010 — Pearson today announced the release of Chancery SMS version 7.3. Chancery SMS provides student information management for some of the largest school districts in the United States. This latest release includes numerous innovative features, including a new, robust Academic Planner tool to help counselors track students’ progress toward graduation.

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The American School Counselor Association (www.schoolcounselor.org) recommends a student to school counselor ratio of 250-to-1, yet today schools have a national average of 467 students assigned to each counselor. Given all of the possible curricular paths student can take, ensuring they are always making progress toward graduation can become a challenging task. With Academic Planner, Chancery SMS significantly reduces the manual effort required to monitor each student’s status toward meeting graduation requirements.

“We’re very excited about the new Academic Planner and all that it has to offer,” says Kathy Nicholson, Chancery SMS Product Manager at Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. “Credit evaluation has always been a challenge, particularly when you’re talking about a counselor who has to work with more than 300 students. Now, counselors can spend less time on paperwork and more time counseling students.”

Academic Planner tracks the courses each student has completed and automatically determines which graduation requirement area each completed course satisfies. Priorities and rules within the Academic Planner are managed by each district, ensuring that complexities such as the number of times a course credit can be awarded are considered. Students can be put on different graduation tracks at any point, and the system will automatically reassign course credits based on the defined rules for that track.

“Most high schools today offer multiple tracks toward graduation. With this new version of Chancery SMS, we offer a robust tool to successfully track each student’s progress toward academic success,” said Paul Fletcher, president of the School Systems group of Pearson. “We believe through the ongoing addition of innovative features like Academic Planner, Chancery SMS will only build upon its reputation as the most robust, customizable, student information system available today to meet the complex needs of large school districts.”

Other new features and enhancements offered in Chancery SMS 7.3 include:

Student Search Results Grid Enhancements – An enhanced student search results grid provides users with immediate access to select records, regardless of district size or search complexity.

New Counselor Base Role and Home Page – Users can define specific counselor roles. Counselors have their own home page, as well as a way to quickly access students specifically assigned to them.

Save Favorite Searches – Users can save a dynamic search list, which is useful for frequently run searches.

Chancery SMS eDocs – Chancery SMS includes full access to the most recent documentation directly from the Chancery SMS interface. Full-text search, extensive hyperlinking, and personal bookmarks make it fast and easy for users to find the information they’re seeking.

For more information about Chancery SMS, please visit: www.PearsonSchoolSystems.com.

About Pearson

Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the global leader in education and education technology, provides innovative print and digital education materials for preK through college, student information systems and learning management systems, teacher professional development, career certification programs, and testing and assessment products that set the standard for the industry. Pearson’s other primary businesses include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group. For more information about the Assessment and Information Group of Pearson, visit: www.pearsonassessments.com.