Department of Education
Dr. Tim Webb, Commissioner

Statewide Student Management System (SSMS)

The Statewide Student Management System is a comprehensive, state provided, web-based, electronic student information system for school districts to facilitate local, state and federal reporting requirements as well as to handle daily local functions (i.e. attendance, scheduling, discipline, etc.).

There are two components of the SSMS:

• Star_Student: The general education component that serves as the primary database (Century Consultants, Ltd.).
• EasyIEP: An IEP writer and Census reporting tool for Special Education (Public Consulting Group).

The SSMS is provided to districts at no cost and participation is voluntary.  The SDE pays all costs associated with data conversion, training, maintenance and support.  Customization and additional features (i.e. Parent Portal) are at district expense.

The four-phased implementation of the SSMS began in the 2004-05 school year with 33 school districts and one state Special School.  The fourth and final group of districts began live implementation of the SSMS in the 2007-08 school year.  The 2008-09 school year began with 104 school districts, four State Special Schools and the Department of Children’s Services utilizing the SSMS.  Additionally, a number of the non-SSMS districts have elected to use the EasyIEP component; while the state requires all districts to use Easy/Census, the special education “census” reporting piece that is embedded in EasyIEP.

Ten locally formed Regional User Groups (RUG) have been established across the state to facilitate self-help and collaboration among the SSMS districts on solving common problems and issues in Star_Student and EIS (Education information System).

In the 2008-09 school year, the state transitioned to a regional hosting environment for the SSMS consisting of two servers for each of the three grand divisions of the state (west, middle and east).

Contact us at ssms.info@tn.gov