| Type | Publicly held, NYSE: LRN |
|---|---|
| Industry | Education |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Founder(s) | Ronald Jay Packard, William Bennet |
| Headquarters | Herndon, Virginia |
| Area served | International |
| Products | education software, textbooks, workbooks |
| Revenue | $140.6 million (as of June 2007) |
| Operating income | $5.6 million (as of June 2007) |
| Employees | 636 (as of 2007) |
| Website | K12 Inc. Home Page |
K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN) is a for-profit, education company that sells on line schooling and curriculum to state and local governments, in place of traditional, "brick and mortar" education, for public school students in grade levels Kindergarten through 12th grade. Research at Western Michigan University and the National Education Policy Center shows that only a third of K12’s schools achieved adequate yearly progress, as required by federal No Child Left Behind legislation. Other studies of online schools generally have found lower performance.[1][2] Nevertheless, K12 Inc's contracts, and its profits, have been increasing dramatically.[3] Critics say that K12 uses its revenue from state contracts to lobby states to defend their contracts.[1]
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The company was founded by William Bennett, Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan and Michael R. Milken from Knowledge Universe.[1][4] and Ronald J. Packard in April 2000.[5] K12 Inc. became a publicly traded company on December 13, 2007.[6]
K12's K-8 curriculum includes subjects such as Math, Science, Literature, Language, Vocabulary, Composition, and History. As an option, Art, Music, and/or a foreign language can also be added to a typical curriculum. A student's schedule is arranged in a weekly, or daily calendar format displaying each subject that must be done for the day. The student clicks on a lesson in the list for that day, completes all of the assignments, then takes the assessment, or test. The assignments include book reading, questions following the reading, science experiments, online flash cards, math problems, and essays. By clicking on a "Lesson Lists" tab, the student can choose a subject, and complete as many lessons and units in one day as he/she would like to. The student may also check his/her progress in a certain subject by clicking on the "Progress" tab. However, the student must complete their core courses to 90% or better by the first Friday of June and have at least 180 days of school attendance.
After all of the assignments in a lesson have been completed the student is usually required to take an assessment. The assessment includes an online portion of multiple choice, which is graded by the computer, or an offline portion, or both, of short answer/multiple choice. Offline portions are graded by the learning coach with the teacher guide and entered into the computer. The answers to the online or offline questions, or both, are then graded by the Online School (OLS). The results are displayed, and the lesson is automatically marked complete. If the test is not "mastered" (80% or above) then the lesson is marked "not mastered". Some lessons, however, do not have assessments. Examples are unit reviews, semester reviews, and some literature and composition lessons. These lessons are marked completed when the student completes all of the activities in the lesson and clicks "Mark this lesson complete" at the end of the lesson. Most assessments have 5-15 questions, but some tests, such as the unit assessments and semester assessments, have between 25-100 questions[7].
K12 allows parents to customize the student's curriculum. The parent may set vacation days, specify what, and how many lessons are taught each day, and whether a student can take an assessment with or without their password permission. The parent can also mark a lesson complete, whether or not the assessment or lesson has been completed. For younger grades, parents are often required to teach, or read a lesson. At the end of a school day parents are required to record the amount of time the student worked on each course that day in the K12 Online School "Attendance" tab.
The High School (9-12) student layout has a more "mature" layout, tailored to the needs of a typical high school student. Instead of accessing lessons from one window, and returning to the home screen after each lessons work is done, each lesson may be opened in its own tab or window. The Class homepage is presented in a similar fashion as the homepage. The prominent feature is the Announcements box, which has a listing of recent news posted by the teacher. There is a sidebar on the left side with drop-menus for each unit, containing the lessons for the course.
Tests can be password-protected or be open to take without one, as long as the test is taken within the time frame the test is open. Tests can also be protected by a program called ExamGuard that each student is required to download. ExamGuard runs as a browser that protected tests must be opened with. The program prevents access any other part of the computer as well as the copy-paste functions, thus preventing cheating and posting the test online afterwards[8]. Students have live classes with teachers called Class Connects. A Class Connect (Internally abbreviated as CC) is hosted by an educational meeting program called Elluminate.
The High School is designed to be more independent and requires less parental involvement. Taking tests and completing lessons are the responsibility of the student, as a preparation for higher education such as a collage where a student is solely responsible for their success or failure. The parent is still responsible for logging attendance. The parent account is presented in the "standard" K-8 layout.
K12 Inc. virtual schools are state-funded schools that use K12's program and curriculum to offer distance education.[9] The schools are considered virtual public schools. Instead of the parent being the sole teacher (as in the independent K12), a state certified teacher is at hand to administer assignments, schedule conferences, and to monitor work. The parent becomes a "Learning Coach". The same curriculum is used, but class projects, such as field trips, are used. Parents can sign their students up for virtual classes where students of the same grade all over the state come to the virtual class, listen to the teacher, and answer questions. These classes are run through virtual conferencing software called Elluminate Live.[10] The teacher can set the response box so that only he or she can see the responses. Because of this, students don't have to worry about getting the answer wrong in front of the whole class; the only ones that would know that the answer was wrong would be the teacher and the student. In this way the teacher can give this student extra help after class if necessary. At the end of the year, the students are required to take the same state standardized test as a typical "brick and mortar" school.[11]
The New York Times investigated K12. They concluded that K12 squeezes profits from public school funding by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload, and lowering standards.[1] The Washington Post raised similar questions.[12]
A study at Western Michigan University and the National Education Policy Center found that only a third of K12’s schools achieved adequate yearly progress, which is required for public schools by the federal No Child Left Behind legislation.[1]
According to the Times, "By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing." In Pennsylvania, 42% of Agora students tested at grade level or better in math, compared with 75% of students statewide. 52% of Agora students tested at grade level or better in reading, compared to 72% statewide.[1]
Nonetheless, Agora brought K12 $72 million in the 2011 school year, or more than 10% of K12's revenue.[1]
School officials said that early development of children requires interaction with other children for socialization, learning collaboration and teamwork, and self-defnition. This is missing in online schools, they said.[1]
Despite lower costs, online schools charge states almost as much as traditional schools. Schools use that money to pay for advertising and lobbying state officials. K12 spent $26.5 million in advertising in 2010. K12 and its employees contributed nearly $500,000 to state political candidates from 2004 to 1010. K12 has contributed money to organizations like Pennsylvania Families for Public Cyber Schools, which lobbied for online schools. In Ohio, an organization founded by a K12 official hired temp agency workers to demonstrate with signs against state representative Steven Dryer, who challenged their funding.[1]
There have been several controversies concerning K12's approach to learning, and several of these controversies surround the Virtual Schools.
The Philadelphia Board of Education called for a termination of the $3 million dollar contract with K12, after the company's co-founder, William Bennett, a former U.S. Secretary of Education in the Ronald Reagan administration, said, “if you wanted to reduce crime … you could abort every Black baby in the country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.”[13]
Some citizens of states using virtual schools do not like the idea of a large, private company taking the jobs of public school teachers, and taking advantage of the state's money.[13]
Some parents are not happy at the idea of being called simply "learning coaches", and being told that they are not homeschooling, but in a home-based public school.[13]
K-12 became a subject of controversy in the 2009 race for Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction when opponents of conservative candidate Rose Fernandez announced that top K-12 officials had already donated $1350 to her candidacy, as well as making campaign donations to Brett Davis (R-Monroe), supporter of virtual school legislation. [14] K-12 has contracted to create curriculum for the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, which would be regulated by the Superintendent of Public Instruction,[15] and in its 2007 prospectus had projected $5 million in 2008 revenues from Wisconsin.[16]