Is AZVA the Only K12 Virtual School Outsourcing Education?

by David Safier

NOTE: This post deals with one aspect of the AZVA/K12 Inc. outsourcing topic. You can read all my posts on the topic here. If you only want to read one post, this is the one that pulls most of the threads together.

Parents and interested educators in other states might direct questions about outsourcing to the K12 virtual schools in their vicinity. Chances are, some of those schools have been sending student papers to India, just like Arizona Virtual Academy has done since 2006.

A K12 vice president confirmed that AZVA sent papers written by middle school and high school students to India to be scored and commented on. It seems unlikely to me the practice was confined to just one school. After all, in July, 2007, K12 filed a letter of intent to acquire Socratic Learning, the company hired to do the outsourcing. You wouldn't likely consider buying a company unless you were planning to make extensive use of its services.

So, which schools are the most likely to have used the services of workers in India? Here's a list of all K12's public (meaning charter) schools. I'd start with K12's biggest schools. According to K12's 2007 stock offering prospectus,

In fiscal year 2007, we derived more than 10% of our revenues from each of the Ohio Virtual Academy, the Arizona Virtual Academy, the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School and the Colorado Virtual Academy. In aggregate, these schools accounted for 49% of our total revenues.

By the way, that means each school pulled in at least $14 million in state revenue.

So the big money schools are: AZVA, which I've already confirmed outsourced education, OHVA, PAVCS as well as AGORA (both in Pennsylvania), and COVA.

Anyone who lives in any of the other states with a K12 school can check there as well.

To find information, the first step would be to use the contact information on the website and ask to speak with the principal or another administrator, just like you would if you were calling your neighborhood school wanting information. If anyone has trouble getting a straight answer, either comment on the blog or email me, and I'll try to help.

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