Education.com scores $9.75 million in second round of funding

Online education portal Education.com will announce a total of $9.75 million in its second round of financing today, VentureBeat has learned. The site seeks to become a one-stop destination for parents looking for online answers about their children’s education.

The site’s main appeal lies in its School Finder application, allowing parents to see information such as teacher-to-student ratio, test scores, and other parent’s reviews about local schools. The site also hosts about 7,000 articles, drawn from both Education.com in-house talent and partnerships with organizations the American Association for School Administrators, covering topics like bullying, gifted students, or keeping kids healthy. The site also has launched an Activities section, which has suggestions for things parents and children can do together, arranged by grade and topic.

Chief officer Ron Fortune wants the site to be the equivalent of WebMD for parents anxious to learn more about their children’s education than what is currently available. “You can’t rely on the schools alone to get the job done in education,” says Fortune. “There’s a lot of talk of No Child Left Behind, there should be more about No Parent Left Behind.” The site is already seeing about 4 million page views a month, according to ComScore, and Fortune says they’re seeing more than 600,000 unique visitors every month.

Tech devoted to learning is having a moment in the sun. According to a report put out by Ambient Insight, the market is seeing its highest rate of investment since the last recession. We’ve written about several companies seeing investment of their own, including Flashcard Friends, Edufire and Dreambox Learning. Education.com is most directly competing with sites like Great Schools and SchoolDigger. With 53.2 million school-aged children in the US according to the US Census, the education marketplace obviously has the potential to grow rapidly.

The company plans to extend the sites social network capabilities, as well as build out their own educational content. Fortune says the site hopes to expand the services offered, mentioning offering premium subscriptions and low-cost online tutoring.

This round of funding was led by California Technology Ventures, with Azure Capital Partners and TeleSoft Partners also participating. Both Azure Capital and TeleSoft Partners had taken part in the first round of funding as well. The company is headquarted in Redwood City, Calif.