Gratitude & Growth: PowerSchool’s Commitment to Transforming Education in 2025 and Beyond

The demands on education are more diverse and challenging than ever before. Caught between budgets and resources, new forms of learning, and new expectations, we know you need access to the right tools and the right information to steer your districts and classrooms into the future. 

Ultimately, we need to put our classroom teachers in a place to succeed, engage families and caregivers, and keep students on track. We recognize education leaders are eager to revolutionize assessments, democratize data, and explore how AI can deliver personalized learning while helping schools and districts do more with less. Districts are at a nexus where they must address immediate needs while also finding a way to not just plan for — but implement — the future of education.  

In 2024, PowerSchool dug deep into these issues and worked with you to design new solutions to help solve today’s teaching and learning challenges. Our focus on creating education software designed to empower educators around the world, helping districts run more efficiently, and supporting personalized learning efforts through responsible AI continues to guide our innovation. And just this fall, we announced our acquisition by Bain Capital, ensuring we have the right partners to continue innovating toward a data-driven future for education.   

As we head into the holiday season, on behalf of PowerSchool, I want to give thanks and celebrate you – teachers, staff, administrators, students, and parents. We are firm in our commitment to bring new tools and rich sources of information to the point of impact in districts worldwide. Here are some insights about where we are and where we are going.

Embracing AI in education 

The exploration of artificial intelligence in education is growing. In fact, our 2024 Education Focus Report found 70% of district leaders believe AI has the potential to enhance teaching and learning, up from 53% in 2023.

In January 2024, PowerSchool introduced PowerBuddy, an AI assistant designed especially for teachers, students, parents, and administrators. Using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Services, PowerBuddy makes learning more accessible by providing personalized insights, increasing engagement, and supporting caregivers, students and teachers across the education ecosystem.  

Here is the current lineup of our PowerBuddy solutions and how they support educators and students: 

• PowerBuddy for Learning: Safely and securely delivers meaningful, relevant, and engaging learning experience for students through conversational AI.  

• PowerBuddy for Data Analysis: Talk to your district’s data and harness its full potential with immediate, actionable insights.  

• PowerBuddy for Assessment: Helps teachers assess student mastery more comprehensively and frequently, allowing them to target additional support where it’s needed. 

• PowerBuddy for College and Career: Offers students personalized support for career exploration and postsecondary planning.  

• PowerBuddy for Community: Provides seamless access to school information with zero staff burden.  

Beyond PowerBuddy, PowerSchool’s comprehensive AI ecosystem is purposefully engineered to “bring AI to data” via a safe and secure AI platform. Through this integrated approach to supporting education from the system level down to each and every student, PowerBuddy’s impact extends beyond efficiency and convenience. By democratizing data access, it empowers you to make data-informed decisions, leading to better student outcomes.

Below is a snapshot of highlights from the over 250 districts supporting over 3 million students who have started leveraging PowerBuddy to support students, families, and educators:

• Over 400 hours saved for teachers by creating more than 15,000 AI-generated assessments using PowerBuddy for Assessment. 

• More than 8,200 messages exchanged in nearly 2,000 conversations by 903 users in PowerBuddy for Learning 

• PowerBuddy for College and Career was enabled in 134 districts just weeks after launch 

Continued global expansion and worldwide district partnerships  

This year, we also made several announcements that highlight our focus on supporting schools around the globe. 

In January we announced our expansion into the Indian market with a goal to grow our employee base in the region to 2,000 in the next 3 to 5 years. As part of that, we expanded our Bengaluru headquarters and announced plans to expand our Chennai office.  

Then in August, PowerSchool announced six new partnerships with leading school organizations in Belize, Honduras, St. Maarten, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, helping bring PowerBuddy and the communications platform MyPowerHub to the Latin America (LATAM) region. Participating customers in LATAM include the International School of Tegucigalpa in Honduras, the St. Maarten Division of Public Education, Northridge School Mexico and El Colegio de Panama.  

We also announced continued momentum in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, including new partnerships with leading schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Lebanon. GEMS Al Khaleej International School in Dubai has adopted PowerSchool’s Student Information System (SIS) to streamline its administrative workflows, and in Abu Dhabi, Maplewood Canadian International School is now the first in the UAE to adopt PowerBuddy.

The MEA announcement followed our June launch of translated and localized products for the Middle East. Educators in the region can now accomplish critical administrative, classroom, and communication workflows by leveraging newly embedded Arabic translations, right-to-left interface display, Hijri calendar overlay, and more.

All of these announcements show how schools around the world are partnering with PowerSchool to achieve strategic initiatives, enhance communications, streamline administrative processes, and engage more deeply across their communities.

Coming soon: A new tool for curriculum and intervention discovery 

Prior to the acquisition, Allovue secured a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to solve the challenge of applying AI tools to help bridge the gap between planning and budgeting in school districts. This resulted in Implement for Impact (I4I), a free online tool that uses AI to provide detailed information about peer-reviewed studies for new learning approaches and interventions — including the budgetary, organizational, and policy contexts in which each intervention was carried out.

Today, you can view the tool in a limited pilot form, but as we continue to roll it out over the next year, thousands of studies will become available, along with a standardized pricing model to generate budget proposals. And for PowerSchool customers, the service will be able to push proposals into our tools as well.

Looking ahead: Leadership and data will be key to transforming education  

Effective leadership is crucial for building trust and driving improvements — especially during times of change. Using data to gain a holistic understanding of students, investments, initiatives and processes can help districts to prioritize impact for students and tame the chaos to create more efficiency in how they work and plan.

You need access to the right tools, especially those capable of tackling big challenges-like chronic absenteeism, staff retention, post-ESSER budgeting, and engaging families. That’s why in 2025 we’ll continue to prioritize PowerSchool SIS, our market-leading SIS supporting over 20 million students, as the foundation for many schools’ and districts’ digital transformation.

As we enter the holiday season, PowerSchool is continuing to build a community through our innovative education technology to support what students need most: a personalized educational experience that helps them thrive in the way that is best for them. We look forward to creating new stories of transformation with districts and education leaders all over the world next year and beyond.