Stride, Inc.

Finance Ronald J. Packard, a former banker, founded the company in April 2000. Leadership William Bennett, Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan was hired as the company's first chairman of the board, serving until 2005. In 2005, the Philadelphia Board of Education called for the termination of a $3M science curriculum contract with K12 after Bennett 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." Bennett subsequently resigned from the K12 board and his part-time position with K12. The contract was not revoked, but was not renewed at the end of the contract term. Founder Packard resigned in 2014 to start Pansophic Learning. ==Offerings==

Education management Stride, Inc. is a for-profit education management organization (EMO). In this sector, Stride does not operate physical schools, but provides online curriculum to homeschooled children and other schools. Stride's for-profit rival EdisonLearning has also moved away from physical schoolhouses to virtual offerings. Stride offers its online curriculum at three levels: • To states and districts as a homeschooling alternative to brick-and-mortar schools • To parents individually as a private, online, homeschooling alternative During the pandemic, enrollment in virtual schools nearly doubled. In the 2019-2020 school year, there were 477 virtual schools with 332,379 students in the U.S. In the 2021-2022 school year, there were 726 virtual schools in the U.S. enrolling 643,930 students. Charter management Stride competes with non-profit educational organizations known as charter management organizations (CMOs) that typically run brick-and-mortar schools. Other large non-profits are Imagine Schools (55 schools), KIPP (209 schools), and Cosmos. Multi-state EMOs and CMOs control about a third of the charter school market. The company manages state-funded virtual charter schools and hybrid schools in twenty-nine U.S. states and the District of Columbia. In 2015, Stride was CMO (and charter holder) for schools enrolling 44,559 students. ==Curriculum==

Stride's product line includes courses for pre-K, elementary, middle, and high school grades, online learning platforms, and educational software. Unlike in the K-8 grades, high school courses take place mostly online. Students attend live online classes and have more communication with teachers, via e-mail, phone, and online conferences. In all cases, the school assigns a state-certified teacher to assist the coach and student. Teacher interaction is accomplished through virtual classroom environments using Newrow, a virtual classroom conferencing system by Kaltura, telephone, and face-to-face meetings and events. In hybrid schools, students complete the same curriculum but attend a physical building and participate in classes with other students and teachers. ==Branding==

Stride, Inc. offers itself through a variety of brands. State and district sponsored homeschooling Stride develops identities for specific opportunities. In Union County, Tennessee, it has operated Tennessee Virtual Academy since 2011. In Pennsylvania, it operates Insight Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. Stride previously operated Hoosier Academy Virtual Charter School, an online charter school in Indiana that enrolled 3,681 students in 2016. The school was closed in June 2018. Private online K-12 schools Stride, Inc. operates three online private schools: K12 Private Academy, George Washington University Online High School, and the Keystone School. In 2011, The George Washington University partnered with Stride to offer a full-time online private school accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools. Career learning Stride, Inc. offers career and technical education programs at public schools, called Destinations Career Academies and Programs to students in grades 9–12. In 2020, Stride expanded into the adult learning space with the acquisition of data science and software engineering bootcamp Galvanize. With the companies rebrand in November 2020, it was announced that they would acquire Tech Elevator, a computer coding bootcamp, and MedCerts, an online healthcare career training program. Learning Solutions In April 2014, Stride, Inc. established wholly owned subsidiary, Fuel Education. Fuel Education operated as a separate legal entity from Stride, Inc., and houses different personalized learning programs. ==School assessment==

The National Education Policy Center regularly conducts studies of the performance of Stride and other for-profit virtual schools including Connections Academy (a subsidiary of Pearson Education). 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 (AYP), which is required for public schools by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. Proponents argue that such statistics are undermined by the fact that a significant proportion of newly enrolled students begin several grade levels behind because of a failure of brick and mortar schools. A paper by Yale students found "With no exceptions, students enrolled in K12 schools performed worse in math than their district and state counterparts. With only one exception, they performed worse in English and language arts" The press and politicians have been equally critical. A 2012 PolitiFact.com article noted K12's poor performance in Tennessee. The New York Times investigated K12 and concluded that the company squeezes profits from public school funding by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload, and lowering standards. K12 defends its position, describing its student base as "at risk" to begin with. ==Lobbying efforts==

The New York Times wrote that K12's profits are used to pay for advertising and lobbying state officials. K12 spent $26.5M on advertising in 2010 and the company and its employees contributed nearly $500,000 to state political candidates from 2004 to 2010. 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. ==Ransomware attack==

In November, 2020, Stride was attacked by Ryuk ransomware criminals, rendering some of Stride's records inaccessible and leading to the threatened release of students' personal information. The company paid an undisclosed ransom amount, saying, "Based on the specific characteristics of the case, and the guidance we have received about the attack and the threat actor, we believe the payment was a reasonable measure to take in order to prevent misuse of any information the attacker obtained". == See also ==