Stride, Inc. (Stride) operates as a technology company providing an educational platform to deliver online learning to students throughout the U.S.
The company's platform hosts products and services to attract, enroll, educate, track progress, and support students. These products and services, spanning curriculum, systems, instruction, and support services are designed to help learners of all ages reach their full potential through inspired teaching and personalized learning. The company's clie...
Stride, Inc. (Stride) operates as a technology company providing an educational platform to deliver online learning to students throughout the U.S.
The company's platform hosts products and services to attract, enroll, educate, track progress, and support students. These products and services, spanning curriculum, systems, instruction, and support services are designed to help learners of all ages reach their full potential through inspired teaching and personalized learning. The company's clients are primarily public and private schools, school districts, and charter boards. Additionally, the company provides solutions to employers, government agencies, and consumers.
The company provides a wide range of products and services across the company's platform with the ability to deliver customized solutions. The company's comprehensive school-as-a-service offering supports its clients in operating full-time virtual schools in the K-12 market. Together with the company's network of online schools, Stride has served millions of students with its products and services.
The company's platform addresses two markets in the K-12 space: General Education and Career Learning. Products and services for the General Education market are predominantly focused on core subjects for kindergarten through twelfth grade students to help build a common foundation of knowledge. These programs provide an alternative to traditional school options and address a range of student needs, including safety concerns, increased academic support, scheduling flexibility, physical/health restrictions or advanced learning. Products and services are sold as a comprehensive school-as-a-service offering or as stand-alone products and services.
Career Learning products and services are focused on developing skills to enter and succeed in careers in high-growth, in-demand industries—including information technology, healthcare, and general business. Through its Career Learning programs, the company provides middle and high school students with content pathways that include job-ready skills and work experiences, and for high school students, that can lead toward an industry certification and/or college credits. Like General Education products and services, the products and services for the Career Learning market are sold as a comprehensive school-as-a-service offering or as stand-alone products and services.
Through the company’s Adult Learning business, it provides training programs leading to certifications in high-demand, growing industries like healthcare and technology. This business also delivers talent development programs to employers and government agencies.
For both the General Education and Career Learning markets, the majority of revenue is derived from the company's comprehensive school-as-a-service offering, which includes an integrated package of curriculum, technology systems, instruction, and support services that it administers on behalf of its customers. The average duration of the agreements for the company's school-as-a-service offering is greater than five years, and most provide for automatic renewals absent a customer notification of non-renewal.
Lines of Revenue
General Education
General Education products and services are predominantly focused on core subjects, including math, English, science and history, for kindergarten through twelfth grade students to help build a common foundation of knowledge. These programs provide an alternative to traditional school options and address a range of student needs. Products and services are delivered as a comprehensive school-as-a-service offering for schools or as stand-alone products and services. A student enrolled in a school that offers Stride’s General Education program may elect to take career courses, but that student and the associated revenue is reported as a General Education enrollment and General Education revenue.
Career Learning
Career Learning products and services are focused on developing skills to enter and succeed in careers in high-growth, in-demand industries—including information technology, healthcare and general business. The company provides middle and high school students with Career Learning programs that complement their core general education coursework. Stride offers multiple career pathways through a broad catalog of courses. The middle school program exposes students to a variety of career options and introduces career skill development. In high school, students may engage in industry content pathway courses, project-based learning in virtual teams, and career development services. High school students have the opportunity to progress toward certifications, connect with industry professionals, earn college credits while in high school, and participate in job shadowing and/or work-based learning experiences that facilitate success in today’s digital, tech-enabled economy. A student is reported as a Career Learning enrollment and associated Career Learning revenue only if the student is enrolled in a Career Learning program. Like General Education products and services, the products and services for Career Learning are sold as a comprehensive school-as-a-service offering or as stand-alone products and services.
The company also provides focused post-secondary career learning programs to adult learners, for the software engineering, healthcare, and medical fields. These programs are sold directly to consumers, employers, and government agencies.
Sales Channels
Virtual Schools
The company's educational platform can be offered in an integrated package of systems, services, products, and professional expertise to support a virtual public school. Customers of these programs can obtain administrative support, information technology, academic support services, online curriculum, learning systems, and instructional services under the terms of negotiated service and product agreements. These contracts are negotiated with, and approved by, the governing authorities of the customer. During any fiscal year, the company may enter into new agreements, receive non-automatic renewal notices, negotiate replacement agreements, terminate such agreements or receive notice of termination, or customers may transition a school to a different offering. The governing boards may also establish school policies and other terms and conditions over the course of a contract, such as enrollment parameters. The authorizers who issue the charters to the company's school-as-a-service customers can renew, revoke, or modify those charters as well.
The majority of the company's revenue is derived from these school-as-a-service agreements with the governing authorities of its public school partners. In addition to providing a comprehensive course catalog, related books and physical materials, a learning management system (LMS) for online learning, and in certain cases, student computers, the company also provides these schools with a variety of administrative support, technology, and academic support services. Full-time virtual and blended school students access online lessons over the internet and utilize offline learning materials provided by the company. Students receive assignments, complete lessons, take assessments, and are instructed by teachers with whom they interact via email, telephonically, in synchronous virtual classroom environments, and sometimes face to face.
Traditional School Districts
The company also distributes its educational platform to schools and school districts across the U.S. and provides access to its digital content, learning software, teachers, and support services. Public schools and school districts are increasingly adopting digital educational solutions to augment teaching practices, launch new learning models, cost-effectively expand course offerings, provide schedule flexibility, improve student engagement, increase graduation rates, replace textbooks, and retain students. State education funds traditionally allocated for textbook and print materials have also been authorized for the purchase of digital content, including online courses, and in some cases mandated access to online courses.
Consumer Sales
The company provides tuition-based online private schools that meet a range of student needs, from individual course credit recovery to college preparatory programs. These programs address students and families in the states in which the company does not offer a free public option, as well as students looking for additional flexibility. Additionally, many families can use education savings accounts, tax credits, and vouchers to attend these schools for low or no cost. The company also pursues international opportunities where it believes there is significant demand for quality online education. The company's international students are typically from expatriate families who wish to study in English, and foreign students who desire a U.S. high school diploma. In addition, the company has entered into agreements that enable it to distribute its products and services to its international and domestic school partners who use its courses to provide broad elective offerings and dual diploma programs.
The company's educational platform also offers the ability to deliver products and services directly to families. These purchasers desire to offer supplemental educational products to further their child’s existing public or private school education. Customers of the company's consumer products have the option of purchasing complete curriculum, individual courses, tutoring, career learning products, or a variety of other supplemental products, covering various subjects depending on their child’s needs. Typical applications include summer school coursework, home-schooling, enrichment, and educational supplements.
The company provides adult learning programs that address the skills gap facing companies in the information technology and healthcare sectors. The company offers in-person and remote immersive full-time software engineering programs designed for adult learners looking to advance their technology careers by providing such learners with skills and real-world experiences. The company's allied health programs provide self-paced, fully online structured training programs that lead to certifications in the healthcare field. The company can also provide these programs directly to enterprises to create customized, tailored education plans to help companies train, upskill, and reskill their employees.
Business Strategy
The company is committed to maximizing every learner’s potential by personalizing their educational experience, delivering a quality education to schools and students, and supporting its customers in their quest to improve academic outcomes and prepare them for college and future careers. To further those objectives, the company continues to make investments in its platforms to improve the effectiveness of its school workforce, develop new instructional approaches, to increase engagement, improve its systems and security, and to enable the company to expand the markets it can serve. This strategy consists of the following key elements: grow enrollments; introduce new and improved products and services; improve student outcomes; and improve retention.
Products and Services
The company continues to invest in its educational platform to educate students more effectively and efficiently. Much of the company's investment has been in the development of improved functionality of its curriculum and technology systems. Areas of focus include: integration and user experience, mobile-enabled products, portability, personalization, flexibility, reading and oral fluency scoring, state standard alignment, tutoring and support, and automated and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted learning.
The company continues to expand upon its personalized learning model, improve the user experience of its products, and develop tools and partnerships to more effectively engage and serve students, teachers, administrators, and adult learners.
Technology Platform
The company has established a secure and reliable technology platform, which integrates proprietary and third-party systems to provide a high-quality educational environment and gives it the capability to grow its customer programs and enrollment. The company's end-to-end platform includes content management, learning management, student information, data reporting and analytics, and various support systems that allow customers to provide a high-quality, and personalized educational experience for students. The platform can be used to deliver the company's products and services in a number of implementation models, including its school-as-a-service offering, integration with existing school LMSs, and to deliver stand-alone offerings to consumers.
The company's platform, along with its back-office support systems, runs on cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The company's key systems leverage a proprietary technology architecture that allows it to develop iterative, agile, and customizable solutions to meet both present and future market needs. The systems run 7 X 24 X 365 on world-class cloud infrastructure from AWS and Azure that operate in multiple availability zones. A business-centric information security program has also been adopted that is tailored to adjust to an ever-changing IT compliance and information security threat landscape. The company's cybersecurity measures and policies are aligned with cybersecurity guidance from the National Institute of Standards & Technologies (NIST) across its cloud ecosystems. See Item 1C of Part I, Cybersecurity, for additional information.
Curriculum and Content
The company's customers can select from hundreds of high-quality, engaging online coursework and content, as well as many state-customized versions of those courses, electives, and instructional supports. The company has built core courses with the guidance and recommendations of leading educational organizations at the national and state levels. Additionally, through its Adult Learning offerings, the company provides high-quality, engaging coursework and content in information technology and healthcare.
Instructional Services
The company provides a broad range of instructional services that include customer support for instructional teams, including the recruitment of state-certified teachers, training in research-based online instruction methods and systems, oversight and evaluation services, and ongoing professional development. The company also provides training options to support teachers and parents in meeting students’ learning needs. The range of training options is designed to enhance skills needed to teach using an online learning platform, and includes hands-on training, on-demand courses, and support materials.
Support Services
The company provides a broad range of support services, including marketing and enrollment (e.g., supporting prospective students through the admission process), assessment management, administrative support (e.g., budget proposals, financial reporting, and student data reporting), and technology and materials support (e.g., providing student computers, offline learning kits, internet access, and technology support services).
The company's student recruitment and marketing team is focused on promoting the K-12 online education category and generating enrollments for its virtual school customers. This is achieved by creating awareness and conversion among families with K-12 students through integrated marketing campaigns that include offline and digital media, as well as web assets. These campaigns are continuously optimized using data analytics and market research. The marketing team also assists in enhancing and reducing friction in the onboarding experience of new students to online schooling. Additionally, the marketing team is working to ensure awareness and conversion in the company's adult learning offerings.
Public Affairs and School Development
The company seeks to increase public awareness of the educational and fiscal benefits of its online learning. The company receives numerous inquiries from school districts, legislators, public charter school boards, community leaders, state departments of education, educators, and parents who express the desire to have a choice in public school options. The company's public affairs and school development teams work together with these interested parties to identify and pursue opportunities to expand the use of its products and services in new and existing jurisdictions.
Operations
The company is responsible for the sourcing, assembly, and delivery of school supplies and materials for its school-as-a-service offerings. The company has developed strong relationships with partners, allowing it to source goods at favorable price, quality, and service levels. The company's fulfillment partner stores its inventory, assembles its learning kits, and ships the kits to students. The company has invested in systems, including its Order Management System, to automatically translate the curriculum selected by each enrolled student into a personalized order to fulfill the corresponding new or refurbished learning kits to ship to each student through an end-to-end efficient and scalable warehousing and fulfillment operation.
Academic Performance
The company's fundamental goal for every child who enrolls in its school-as-a-service offerings is to meet the needs of the family, which often includes improving academic performance. While many students come to the company behind grade level or under-credited, the company continually strives to achieve that objective by undertaking new initiatives and improving existing programs that support students and families. To monitor student learning progress during the school year, the company uses multiple equivalent assessments at the lesson, unit, and semester level to provide intervention points to improve outcomes.
Competition
The company competes primarily with companies that provide online curriculum and school support services to K-12 virtual and blended public schools, including Pearson PLC (Connections Academy), Lincoln Learning Solutions, StrongMind, Pansophic Learning, Inspire Charter Schools, and Charter Schools USA, and state administered online programs, among others. The company also faces competition from digital and print curriculum providers including Curriculum Associates, Imagine Learning LLC, Edmentum Inc., Discovery Education, and traditional textbook publishers such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw Hill. Other competing digital curriculum providers, including Khan Academy, Duolingo, IXL Learning, Inc. and Renaissance Learning, Inc., offer a different pricing model which provides curriculum at a lower cost (sometimes free) but may charge for additional products or services. The company also competes with institutions, such as The Laurel Springs School (Spring Education Group) and Penn Foster Inc. for online private pay school students. Additionally, the company's Adult Learning offerings compete with other in-person and remote immersive programs and self-paced online training programs including General Assembly (a subsidiary of Adecco), Bloom Institute of Technology, Penn Foster Inc. and Education to Go (a subsidiary of Cengage Learning), among others.
Intellectual Property
The company's patent portfolio includes four U.S.-issued patents and one foreign-issued patent directed towards various aspects of its educational products and offerings. Two of the U.S.-issued patents encompass the company's online foreign language instruction. The other two U.S.-issued patents and the foreign-issued patent encompass the company's system and method for producing, delivering, and managing educational material.
The company owns copyrights related to the lessons contained in the courses that comprise its proprietary curriculum. The company has also obtained federal, state, and foreign registrations for numerous trademarks that are related to its offerings, and it has applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register certain new trademarks.
The company grants licenses to individuals and schools to use its software and access its online learning systems. These licenses are intended to protect the company's ownership and the confidentiality of the embedded information and technology contained in its software and systems.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development costs totaled $16.6 million for the year ended June 30, 2025.
Regulation
The company and the virtual and blended public schools that it serves are subject to regulation by and laws of each of the states in which the company operates. The state laws and regulations that impact its business are primarily those that authorize or restrict its ability to operate these schools, the applicable funding mechanisms for the schools and the increasing number of states with their own, unique privacy laws. To the extent these schools receive federal funds, such as through a grant program or financial support dedicated for the education of low income families, these schools also become subject to additional federal regulation.
A virtual or blended public school that fails to comply with the state laws and regulations applicable to it may be required to repay these funds and could become ineligible for receipt of future state funds. To be eligible for state funding, some states require that virtual and blended public schools be organized as not-for-profit charters exempt from taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The schools must then be organized exclusively for charitable educational purposes, and not for the benefit of private, for-profit management companies. The board or governing authority of the not-for-profit virtual or blended public school must retain ultimate accountability and control for the school’s operations to retain its tax-exempt status. It may not delegate its responsibility and accountability for the school’s operations. The company’s service agreements with these virtual and blended public schools are, therefore, structured to ensure the full independence of the not-for-profit board and preserve its arms-length ability to exercise its fiduciary obligations to operate a virtual or blended public school.
Five primary federal laws are directly applicable to the day-to-day provision of educational services the company provides to virtual and blended public schools:
Every Student Succeeds Act (‘ESSA’). Under the ESSA, the states have the discretion to develop and design their own accountability systems within a broad federal framework. In addition, states have been given the authority to adopt different types of annual accountability plans for school performance, including proficiency and growth standards for all students and subgroups. The ESSA makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education has a limited role to impose federal mandates, direction or control over the authority given to the states. Notwithstanding these federal limitations, states are still required under ESSA to test students in reading or language arts and math annually in grades 3-8 and once in grades 10-12, and in science once in each of the following grade spans: 3-5, 6-9 and 10-12. All states have plans approved by the U.S. Department of Education to demonstrate compliance with ESSA.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (‘IDEA’). The IDEA is implemented through regulations governing every aspect of the special education of a child with one or more specific disabilities that fit within any of the disability categories listed in the Act. The IDEA created a responsibility on the part of a school to identify students who may qualify under the IDEA and to perform periodic assessments to determine the students’ needs for services. A student who qualifies for services under the IDEA must have in place an individual education plan, which must be updated at least annually, created by a team consisting of school personnel, the student, and the parent. This plan must be implemented in a setting where the child with a disability is educated with non-disabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate. IDEA provides the student and parents with numerous due process rights relating to the student’s program and education, including the right to seek mediation of disputes and make complaints to the state education agency. The schools the company manage are responsible for helping ensure the requirements of IDEA are met. The virtual public schools and blended schools are required to comply with certain requirements in IDEA concerning teacher certification and training. We, the virtual public school or the blended school could be required to provide additional staff, related services, supplemental aids and services or a private school option at the company’s own cost to comply with the requirement to provide a free appropriate public education to each child covered under the IDEA. If the company fail to meet this requirement, we, the virtual public school or blended school could lose federal funding and could be liable for compensatory educational services, reimbursement to the parent for educational services the parent provided and payment of the parent’s attorney’s fees.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. A virtual public school or blended school receiving federal funds is subject to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (‘Section 504’) insofar as the regulations
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implementing the Act govern the education of students with disabilities as well as personnel and parents. Section 504 prohibits discrimination against a person on the basis of disability in any program receiving federal financial assistance if the person is otherwise qualified to participate in or receive benefit from the program. Students with disabilities not specifically listed in the IDEA may be entitled to specialized instruction or related services pursuant to Section 504 if their disability substantially limits a major life activity. Beginning in 2011, the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education interpreted both Section 504 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act to apply to elementary and secondary schools and to require that students with disabilities be afforded substantially equivalent ease of use as students without disabilities. As applied to online public schools, such ‘web accessibility’ requires technical capabilities similar to those applied to procurements of information technology by the federal government under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (‘Section 508’) or standards adopted by the world-wide web consortium, such as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (‘WCAG’) Level A and Level AA. If a school fails to comply with the requirements and the procedural safeguards of Section 504, it may lose federal funds even though these funds flow indirectly to the school through a local board. In the case of bad faith or intentional wrongdoing, some courts have awarded monetary damages to prevailing parties in Section 504 lawsuits. Because there is no federal rule setting a uniform technical standard for determining web accessibility under Section 508 and Title II of the ADA, online service providers have no uniform standard of compliance. Some states have adopted the standards promulgated under Section 508, while others require WCAG Level A and/or Level AA or their own unique standards.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (‘FERPA’). Virtual public schools and blended schools are also subject to the FERPA which protects the privacy of a student’s educational records and generally prohibits a school from disclosing a student’s records to a third party without the parent’s prior consent. The law also gives parents certain procedural rights with respect to their minor children’s education records. A school’s failure to comply with this law may result in termination of its eligibility to receive federal education funds. Schools that contract with vendors that violate FERPA may be prohibited from contracting with the vendor for five years.
Communications Decency Act. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (‘CDA’) provides protection for online service providers against legal action being taken against them because of certain actions of others. For example, the CDA states that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any data given by another provider of information content. Further, Section 230 of the CDA grants interactive online services of all types, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided or posted by a third party. As part of the company’s technology services offering, the company provide an online school platform on which teachers and students may communicate. The company also conduct live classroom sessions using Internet-based collaboration software and the company may offer certain online community platforms for students and parents. While the CDA affords the company with some protection from liability associated with the interactive online services the company offer, there are exceptions to the CDA that could result in successful actions against the company that give rise to financial liability.
Other Federal Laws. Other federal laws also apply to virtual managed schools, in some cases depending on the demographics associated with a school. For example, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been deemed to apply to English language learners (‘ELL’) Students, as further defined in the joint guidance issued by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education in January 2015. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 also applies, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in education programs, activities and employment, applies to all schools that receive federal funds. There are also other federal laws and regulations that affect other aspects of the company’s business such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (‘COPPA’), which imposes certain parental notice and other requirements on the company that are directed to children under 13 years of age who access the web-based schools the company manage. In addition, the Children’s Internet Protection Act requires that school districts that receive certain types of federal funding must ensure that they have technology which blocks or filters certain material from being accessed through the Internet. The company have developed procedures by which computers that the company ship to students meet this requirement. Many other federal and state laws, such as deceptive trade practices laws, the Lanham Act and others apply to the company, just as they do to other businesses. If the company fail to comply with these and other federal laws, the company could be determined ineligible to receive funds from federal programs or face penalties.
None of Galvanize, Tech Elevator and MedCerts qualifies or receives Title IV funding under the Higher Education Act, but each of them is eligible for federal funding through its respective veterans education and workforce programs. As such, each is required to comply with the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as amended, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, and all Federal regulations adopted to carry out such laws. If the company fail to comply with these federal laws, the company could be determined ineligible to receive funds from federal programs or face penalties. Galvanize also provides training services to active duty service members subject to the Federal Acquisition Regulations and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.
The company’s business also encompasses individual products packaged and sold directly to consumers, including elements of Galvanize, Tech Elevator and MedCerts, along with products for child education, including individual online courses and supplemental educational products. A variety of federal, state and non-U.S. laws and regulations apply to this aspect of the company’s business, including laws and regulations related to consumer protection, payments, marketing and advertising, taxation, privacy, data security, and artificial intelligence.
History
The company was incorporated in 1999. It was formerly known as K12 Inc. and changed its name to Stride, Inc. in 2020.
