Companies Target Hybrid-Charter Market

Ed Week

March 5

As hybrid charter schools have grown in number, so, too, has companies’ understanding of how to serve the small but growing niche of schools looking for content, technical support, and conceptual guidance on mixing online instruction and face-to-face learning. And among those companies, it appears the usual suspects from the virtual education world are leading the pack. Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc. and Baltimore-based Connections Education have grown around business models that encourage flexible product offerings, from full-time virtual school management to individual course offerings for brick-and-mortar schools. That range has made the pair perhaps a natural fit for the hybrid school market. It’s worth noting that the New York City-based Pearson Education—one of the “Big Three” of traditional textbook publishing, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, of Boston, and the New York-based McGraw-Hill Cos.—purchased Connections Education last September.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/07/23biz-hybrid-side.h31.html