Penn Foster High School

Penn Foster High School

Address

200 Hickory Street Scranton , Pennsylvania 18505 United States
Information
Type	Private High School
Established	1890
Founder	Thomas J. Foster
Status	Open
President	Frank F. Britt
Grades	9–12
Enrollment	12,453 in 2022-2023 per DoE
Color(s)	Blue and White
Accreditation	Regional: Middle States Commission on Secondary Schools National: DEAC AdvancED: AdvancED
Website	www.pennfoster.edu/high-school

Penn Foster High School is a for-profit online high school based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States. The high school is regionally and nationally accredited and is the largest high school by enrollment in the United States.^[1]

It offers a high school diploma program and several high school concentration programs, including an early college program.

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History

19th century

In 1890, Thomas J. Foster, a newspaper editor, founded what was named the International Correspondence Schools to provide coal miners with the education they needed to advance in their careers and increase worker safety. According to a history of the school, its "success is owed to its understanding the market and its prospective students. Influenced by the popular Horatio Alger books, people were looking to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and climb the social and economic ladder."

Beginning in the 1890s, ICS received competition from state schools, including Penn State.

20th century

By the 1920s, public high school education had become more universal, providing more of the basic education that ICS had provided so many. The G.I. Bill paid for in-person educations, drawing away ICS customers. ICS shrank and was a small operation from the 1950s to the 1990s.^[2] As the popularity of correspondence schools waned, ICS lost students.^[3]

After several name changes in the 1990s, in 2006 ICS became Penn Foster High School, Penn Foster Career School, and Penn Foster College.

21st century

In 2007, the Wicks Group, a private equity firm, bought the school from Thomson Corporation. In 2009, Penn Foster was resold to test preparation and educational support company The Princeton Review. In 2012, the Princeton Review brand name and operations were bought for $33 million by Charlesbank Capital Partners, a private-equity firm. The parent company was renamed Education Holdings 1, Inc.^[4] In 2013, Education Holdings 1 filed for bankruptcy; it exited two months later.^[5]^[6] In 2014 Vistria Group, led by Martin Nesbitt, acquired Penn Foster.^[7]^[8]

In 2018, Bain Capital acquired Penn Foster from Vistria Group.^[9]^[10]

Academics

Penn Foster High School is an open enrollment institution. As an online school, students do not work directly with certified teachers. Rather, they complete classes in a correspondence school-like format. To obtain a high school diploma, students take a core curriculum of classes and five elective courses. Students may use these elective courses to focus on specific industries, such as healthcare, information technology, or building technology, or may take approved college level courses.^[11] Students and graduates can access Penn Foster Career Services, which helps students find a job through resume and cover letter preparation, job search assistance, and interview tips. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Penn Foster High School has 11.5 FTE (full-time equivalent teachers) for about 13,000 students.^[12]