K12 Becoming Stride, Diversifies with Second Bootcamp Purchase
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 12/08/20
K12,
which will soon be officially known as "Stride," recently
said it was acquiring bootcamp Tech
Elevator
for $23.5 million. This is the second bootcamp acquisition made by a
company whose traditional business has focused on running online K-12
schools. In January K12 purchased Galvanize
for $165 million.
Company
officials explained that while Galvanize bootcamps enroll advanced
beginners in software engineering and data science bootcamps, Tech
Elevator expands the market by taking students with no coding
experience. Whereas Galvanize has a presence in 10 cities, Tech
Elevator has schools in eight cities. Both also run online programs.
On
the same day that K12 announced the Tech Elevator news, it also said
it would also be buying MedCerts,
a company focused on healthcare industry workforce development and
education.
The
move away from K-12 education exclusively comes at a time when every
school in the country has struggled to develop online programming for
instruction. While some stock watchers predicted that K12 would see a
boom in business with the pandemic, the opposite occurred. In
September, longtime K-12 customer Miami-Dade
School Board
voted to stop using the platform, following technical snafus. The
company's stock fell from a high of $51.60 per share in August to its
current price of about $22.
Last
week, K12's fortunes took another hit when it announced that it had
been a victim of ransomware. According to company officials, the
attacker accessed "certain parts" of its "back-office
systems, including some student and employee information." The
investigation continues, but in the meantime, K12 said it would pay
the ransomware, "as a proactive and preventive step to ensure
that the information obtained by the attacker from our systems will
not be released on the Internet or otherwise disclosed. on those
systems."
K12
announced its name change in November, explaining that "a great
education doesn't stop at high school graduation." In a
statement, CEO Nathaniel Davis explained that "the Stride brand
recognizes that, as a company, we are no longer limited by the
boundaries of the K-12 market, and that we are dedicated to
supporting lifelong learning and providing personalized, high-quality
education in important career pathways that launch good paying
careers." That name change takes effect on Dec. 16, 2020.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.