The CEA Blog

K12, a for-profit Virginia-based operator of virtual charter schools in 10 different states held an initial public offering of its stock last week; the company did not do quite as well as they had hoped.

Only 63% of its hoped for $172.5 million was raised, but the Washington Post reported K12’s share price raised 36%. The company has operated the Ohio Virtual Academy since the 2002-2003 school year and currently enrolls 3,408 students in Ohio and over 27,000 in its combined operation.

Both the Ohio Virtual Academy and Columbus City Schools earned a Continuous Improvement rating for the 2006-2007 school year, but that is where the similarities end.

Columbus City Schools made AYP as a district; OVA did not meet AYP and is now in School Improvement, year 2.

The school enrolled 3,408 in the 2006-2007 school year. Eighty eight percent of its students were white (versus 28.4% for CCS), 8.0% were African-American (versus 62% for CCS), 42.7% were economically disadvantaged (versus 73.3% for CCS), no students were listed as Limited English Proficient (versus 7.7% for CCS) and 6.7% of students were classified as having disabilities (versus 15.6% for CCS).

OVA paid its 91 Ohio teachers an average of $32,341, according to the Ohio Department of Education’s website. No word on whether or not the company will share the estimated $108 million from the IPO with non-unionized Ohio teachers.

A solidarity hat tip goes to John at AFT for this one.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Vouchers, NCLB, Columbus City Schools, CEA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.