For those who have wanted a bit more solid evidence for why I think the K12 IPO is not much of a deal.

This set of requests for Maryland's Virtual Learning Opportunity Program was brought to my attention in the course of our weekend web search of grant and contract RFPs for K-12Leads and Youth Service Markets Report.

• Knowledge of design and pedagogy of PreK-12 online learning
• Services of a Flash Developer for Online High School
• Development of Content for an Online English 2 Course

K-12Leads' readers know that these kinds of rfps are hardly rare. This cluster is worth pointing out now only because it bounds the spectrum of activities relevant to the operation of a virtual school: from overall design, to basic functionality, to core content.  It also points out how following RFP trends should be considered basic to the due diligence of education investors - especially to the various firms providing the support services investors rely on. It's not rocket science, costly, nor all that time-consuming. Indeed, it's one very good way to understand where the market's demand side is going. That's one reason my firm performs the work.

In 1995, bricks and mortar EMO Edison announced its contract with Boston's Renaissance Charter School with great fanfare. In 2003, the school's board terminated the relationship - two years before the contract's expiration. This was not really about Edison. At first, the school's organizers needed a turnkey solution to get up and running fast - a ready-made model was better than no school at all.  As time passed, the board learned how to run a charter school and naturally wanted to do things its way, rather than the way that made the life of Edison's central office easiest.

Today, that EMO is trying hard to unbundle its services, but now each disaggregated offering competes with a host of specialized national, regional and local providers - consider its Newton SES program. In any given city, Newton is up against SCORE!,  regionals like University Instructors, and a host of tiny local firms and nonprofits. It's a living, but not the vision Edison's investors signed up for.

This consequence of technology transfer between EMO's and their clients, and technology dissemination between 
"whole programs" and their parts is inevitable, even for virtual EMOs like K12. (Another place to look for this tendencey is the evolution of comprehensive school reform under the once and, if you believe the Miller/McKeon NCLB II draft, maybe future federal Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program, but that's an edbizbuzz posting for later.)

The Maryland rfps suggest that virtual education's place on the experience curve is about where charter and contract school education were circa 2003. The days where a virtual EMO provider like K12 could "bundle" the parts, charge more for the whole, and extract the surplus are numbered. The capacity to manage a virtual school isn't special.  Educators are getting the hang of it, deconstructing its value chain, and parsing out the parts to get the best value. While there may be only a handful of providers who could compete for the whole virtual school, literally hundreds of individuals, firms and nonprofits can compete for the parts. And when any service or product becomes a commody, prices fall.

Bottom line: K12's time for an IPO came and went several years ago.