In August 2024, the business magazine Inc. released its annual list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States. At 815th, a burgeoning upstart called ClassWallet cracked the list’s top 20 percent for the third straight year. By expanding its operations managing school voucher programs for states across the country, earnings for the Florida company grew by 610 percent over the previous three years.
Founded in 2014, ClassWallet now has more than 200 employees and has contracts to administer school vouchers and other educational programs in 18 states through its “digital wallet” platform.
Indeed, managing school vouchers has become big business. And as Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature gear up to pass their own program this session, private companies like ClassWallet are descending on the Capitol to lobby for the vouchers legislation and the lucrative contracts it could generate. This comes as other states have drawn scrutiny over myriad problems with the private contractors, including ClassWallet, they’ve hired to administer their voucher programs…