What are "student attributes" and how are they managed?

Student attributes are simply facts and details about students.

Many basic attributes like "First Name", "Last Name", "Birthday", etc. are built into Schoolrunner. You can see all of these on student pages, and you can use most of them to break out your data throughout Schoolrunner. For example, you can break out attendance data by "Zip Code" on the Analysis page, or filter students by "Ethnicity" on the Groups page.

Naturally, not every detail that your school wants to track is built into Schoolrunner. But you can add new attributes! This lets you track whatever datapoints you want.

Every new attribute you add represents a field that can be filled in for individual students. For example, if you add a "Has Chromebook" field to Schoolrunner, you can then fill in with whatever values make sense for each student: "Yes", "No", "Unknown", "Yes (Broken)", etc.

Creating a new attribute, and then filling in that attribute with information about specific students, are two different processes. But creating the attribute is always first. Learn more here about entering info into attributes.

Managing Student Attributes

If you want to add a new attribute to Schoolrunner, modify an existing attribute, or remove one, visit the Student Attribute Types page (Setup>Configure>People>Students; you'll need the "Edit Student Attribute Types" permission).

This page doesn't show basic attributes like student name or birthday, but it lists out all attributes that you can manipulate. You'll see several columns:

1. Name – How the attribute is displayed in Schoolrunner ("Bus Stop", "Father Cell Phone", etc.).
2. Attribute Key – A unique backend key for this attribute. This is crucial if you're syncing attributes directly from PowerSchool. For attributes managed within Schoolrunner, this needs to be unique but the exact value is less important.
3. Display Group – The section in which the attribute should display. In the above screenshot, there are two sections/display groups: "Student" and "Home".
4. Schoolrunner Managed – Indicates whether this attribute is synced in from PowerSchool, or if this attribute is managed entirely within Schoolrunner. Learn more here.
5. All Schools – Indicates whether this attribute is displayed across all schools in your network (if applicable) or just the current school you're logged into.
6. Slips – Indicates whether this attribute should be displayed on student slips. More on that here.
7. Report Cards – Indicates whether this attribute should be displayed on report cards. More on that here.
8. Mobile – Indicates whether this attribute should be shown on mobile student profile pages. More on that here.

The search box at the top of the attributes list will scan for attribute names. Attributes can be grabbed with your cursor and reordered. The page will save automatically once you release the attribute into its new position.

Some attributes are hardcoded to appear in certain places. Basic student information such as "Name", "Homeroom", "Birthday", etc. will keep their order in the "Student" display group no matter what; the last two attributes in the "Student" display group will always be student numbers; student contacts and phone numbers will always appear at the top of the "Home" display group. You may notice a few other hardcoded attribute positions.

Each attribute also has a gear with three options that allow you to manipulate it: "Edit", "Duplicate", and "Delete".

Remember, the Student Attribute Types page is where you define which fields exist for student information, but it is not where you fill in that information for individual students. See here for that.