Failing Schools Are Booming Business Opportunity

By Carole Hornsby Haynes       December 14, 2025 

Public school enrollment continues to careen downward with no end in sight. Although the long term decline in the U.S. birth rate and changing demographics are drivers for plummeting enrollment, dissatisfaction with public education and school choice are triggering a movement toward alternative forms of education. 

Results of the February 5, 2025, Gallup Mood of the Nation survey shows a record low in satisfaction with public education with 24% satisfied and 73% dissatisfied, an increase in dissatisfaction from 57% in 2001 and 68% in 2024. 

Panic is sweeping across public education as highly paid educrats, teachers unions, and school vendors face the financial consequences of declining enrollment with subsequent school closings and consolidations. 

And they have reason to panic. Public education is big business -- a very big business -- with nearly $900 million of taxpayers’ money spent each year for K-12. Regardless of whether students are instilled with an academic education, public school educrats rake in six figure paychecks with district leaders usually getting rich compensation packages in addition. Teacher union leaders also collect six figure paychecks while vendors grow rich at taxpayers’ expense. 

EdTech has convinced educators that American students can’t learn without a digital device, along with software and tech support for more profit centers. Never mind that Silicon Valley billionaires send their precious progeny to Waldorf School of the Peninsula which bans computers in its classrooms. The sale of writing and publishing instructional materials are a gold mine for other vendors. Professional development, food, cleaning, transportation, and special education services are cash cows as well. Social and emotional learning (SEL) providers are making billions from the sale of their curriculum allegedly to support student mental health while producing more angry, confused kids with their Marxist infused lessons. 

Even with all of these “essential services,” student academic achievement continues to divebomb and parents are jumping from the sinking Titanic. 

This presents a new opportunity for vendors to gain another public school profit center -- recruiting students for government schools. Desperately trying to lure students back to the classroom since their funding depends on daily attendance, schools are hiring recruiting firms to entice students back to the classroom by whatever means. 

Initially specializing in political campaigns, Memphis, Tennessee based Caissa K12 has built a student recruitment industry which spans 27 states with more than 100 school distsricts in big cities such as Memphis, Tennessee; Little Rock, Arkansas; Orlando, Florida; Newark, New Jersey; Round Rock, Texas; and Farmers Branch/Carrollton, Texas. 

Ignoring the public’s reasons for dissatisfaction, CEO Brian J. Stephens contends that schools must sell themselves. Semminly clueless about the reasons that parents are baiing out, the firm’s website promises that “we identify the catalysts for stalling numbers and implement a long term to sustain enrollment numbers.” Does that include a return to an academic curriculum that is free of Marxist politicization and radical sex? Does that include a return to academic content that does not use the 1619 Project curriculum that presupposes America was founded on slavery? Will schools abandon the teaching of Critical Race Theory and the Diversity Equity Inclusion garbage? 

Rather than concentrating on restoring academic excellence, Stephens leverages grassroots tactics in their recruitment stragegies to compete against school choice options by focusing on parent engagement, marketing, and strategic outreach. The school becomes the political client as Caissa utilizes email blasts, live calls, door knocking, robo calls, canvassing, events, mail pieces, digital ads, and text messages. 

Instead of focusing on a return to education’s main purpose of instilling academic learning that is the crux of school choice, Caissa uses compelling stories about the school’s culture - translate that as sports and student activities, especially those that engage the community. Caissa operates on the premise that keeping students in school is tied to better communications with parents and community. 

Stephens touts himself as the “nation's leading student recruitment expert.” In one of his keynote speeches, he discusses “how public schools can reclaim their competitive edge by adopting innovative strategies for recruiting and retaining students.” 

Instead of talking about schools remaining open to instill academic learning, Stephens emphasizes in his book, The Customer is Not Always Right! But We Sure Do Need Them, that financial resources leave the school with the student that “make it possible to keep teachers, improve facilities and grow.” Unspoken is the fact that declining enrollment has a disastrous impact on corporate bottom lines and the power of teacher unions as well. 

The Caissa website illustrates how success in recruiting students is not a cost, but a "return on investment" (ROI) with an increase in income to the district.  In this warped thinking, students represent merely a monetary value. 

No wonder there is such a disparity between parents and public education. Perhaps school recruitment will be successful in the short run but, until public education returns to the purpose of education instead of being an indoctrination center, a money tree for thousands of vendors, and a political tool for teacher unions, school enrollment will continue its sharp decline. In the meantime, Caissa and other recruiters will profit handsomely from the failure of public edcuation.