News and Insights
The Invisible Hand: Marketing’s Role in School Choice
November 25, 2025
The social dynamics of choice are heavily influenced by the market dynamics of advertising
- Public schools are fighting an unequal war in the school choice ecosystem.
- Millions of dollars are spent annually by the private sector to actively recruit students via sophisticated advertising, while public districts have little to no budget for this.
- The conversation about school choice and public school improvement is fundamentally incomplete until we acknowledge that market dynamics—particularly the invisible hand of marketing—shape family decisions too.
Education is a right, not a privilege, and in the U.S., public schools are the institutions that make good on this promise. But public schools are competing in a market in which they’re structurally and unevenly matched against alternative players in marketing and communications dollars, and until we acknowledge this reality, we’re not having an honest conversation about improving education, for anyone.
Debates about commitment, governance, strategies and reforms are all red herrings when we ignore the underlying economic forces that shape what is possible. Market dynamics don’t bend to ideals, they merchandise them. For public schooling to fulfill its true promise, we will have to ‘get real’ about what it takes to compete and which forces influence “choice.”
A Competitive Market
When each of my two children were nearing kindergarten age, my school district sent us a form letter about how to register for our local, zoned school. Great, we thought. We’d heard good things about the elementary school in our Massachusetts suburb. (And yes, aware of my privilege living in one of the nation’s consistently top performing education states.)
Now that my eldest child is in middle school, we’ve started to receive colorful, glossy brochures and invitations in the mail from various private and alternative high schools in our area. The volume of this unsolicited mail, the radio ads about local private schools and the TV commercials about virtual options all illustrate how schools now operate in a full-blown competitive market. With so many options now available—whether virtual, brick and mortar, homeschool pods, or private—schools outside of the traditional, public system are engaged in active outreach to families.
As an education communications expert, I immediately start thinking about who we’re NOT hearing from. No mail from the very well-regarded public high school for which we are zoned. A school whose alumni include Olympic athletes, famous musicians, philanthropists, scientists. A school whose graduation and college matriculation rates steadily surpass 90 percent. This school relies only on traditional word-of-mouth, or on simply being the default school for our Zip Code.
The argument that public schools shouldn’t need glossy advertising misses a critical point: School budgets are based on per-pupil funding. When a student enrolls elsewhere (e.g., private school), their funding leaves with them. This direct loss shrinks the district’s operating budget, even though fixed costs (buildings, staff, office supplies, etc.) remain. Facing a budget decrease based on enrollment changes, some districts are forced into a desperate gamble: spending limited resources on recruitment in hopes of winning students back and preventing deeper, more devastating cuts for the students who remain.
It is rare for traditional public school districts to have large, dedicated budgets for competitive marketing, particularly because it might invite questions about fiscal appropriateness for a public service, not to mention the fairly complex and laborious procurement processes required by the public sector. Add to this the dearth of marketing and communications expertise at the local education agency level. More often than not, state education agencies run with a lean public information function of one to three communications staff.
We need to be honest about the ways in which public schools have not been set up to communicate clearly with the communities they serve. Factor in the current commercialization in school choice and we have a tiered system where alternatives to public schooling with marketing/communications budgets may be better equipped to capture the many families who are open to fundamentally rethinking their relationship to school, and the schools without those resources get left gathering dust.
The Marketing Machine
We rarely discuss the not-so-insignificant role that marketing plays—marketing that is almost exclusively done by private sector schools and never responded to in kind by public education. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) found that 54 percent of independent schools had annual marketing budgets over $70,000, with 28 percent exceeding $120,000.
There are approximately 30,000 private K-12 schools in the U.S.; we’re talking about billions of dollars in play for your attention, while most traditional districts can barely catch up. Exact figures are elusive, but U.S. families are targeted with coordinated campaigns focused on their children’s education which treat marketing as a core operational function vital for growth.
Can you think of the last commercial you saw for your local public schools?
Alarmingly, there is scant research available to tease out how families choose which school to send their child to, or on market dynamics beyond what is referred to as “competition.” But believing decisions about school options is taking place on a level playing field ignores the reality of unevenly distributed resources, demographic diversity and incomplete messaging. Schools do not compete only on the merits of their programs—they compete on their ability to reach families with persuasive messaging.
The Myth of Cerulean Blue
This reminds me of an ongoing conversation I’ve had with my daughter, now a young adolescent. Her father and I think it’s important that she understand how her interests and preferences might be swayed by a less-than-transparent commercial reality. She has long sought to define herself: I am a person who likes llamas, corgis, narwhals, mushrooms, musicals. But she lives in a consumer world, where those things are pumped into stores and into her very consciousness, co-branded with musicians and influencers and advertised into ubiquity. We point out that she didn’t stumble across those animals in the library or on a field safari, they were marketed to her. Yes, I realize I am Miranda Priestly lecturing Andy on how her choice of cerulean blue is not a bold and independent fashion decision but rather preordained by marketing forces stronger than any of us. As is often the case, Meryl Streep is not wrong.
And maybe I’m making a less pointed Miranda-esque plea that we all take this same wisdom into consideration with conversations about school choice. This is particularly important when we talk about the promise of public education and ways in which it has not failed, but rather been prevented from succeeding.
I’m not saying that any parent who chooses an alternative to their local public school is being hoodwinked by marketing. We are all making what we think is the best choice for our children, and sometimes that means private school or some other alternative. But all parents live in a world that speaks in soundbites and marketing dollars. Just as my daughter’s preferences have been invisibly shaped by commercial forces with an interest, so too are families’ school choices influenced by targeted campaigns they may not even recognize as marketing.
A Reality Check
In the world today, little or no marketing by public schools is untenable with what we know about persistent enrollment decline and significant per-pupil funding loss catalyzed by and continuing after COVID. Districts in competitive markets will have to invest in marketing and PR as necessary to retain students and teaching talent.
But more importantly, the next time you hear about enrollment statistics that show families leaving public schools, ask yourself: What role did the multi-millions of dollars spent on marketing play in creating that reality? And why are we treating this as pure consumer choice rather than the result of a profoundly unequal information war?
Until we’re honest about the invisible hand of marketing in school choice, we’re not having a real conversation about innovation, about competition, about why families are making the decisions they’re making—or what it would take to ensure real excellence in our public schools.
Key Takeaways
- Mandate Marketing Investment: Public education leaders need to budget for strategic, competitive marketing and PR as a core function to protect per-pupil funding and student retention.
- Champion Research into Choice Drivers: Fund or advocate for research that goes beyond “competition” to understand the true impact of marketing spend, source of information, and demographic dynamics on family decision-making.
Shift the Narrative: Communications strategies need to actively counter the persuasive commercial narratives promoted by private options and highlight the distinct, compelling value proposition of public education.
POSTED BY: Jacqui Lipson
