Hillsdale rides classical education boom as parents seek alternatives to woke K-12 schools

Hillsdale College is expanding its footprint to accommodate parents frustrated with woke classroom instruction in their local K-12 schools.

Since 2010, the conservative Michigan-based college has helped open 21 charter schools and partnered with 33 others in 27 states through its Barney Charter School Initiative, offering classical education focusing on civic virtue and moral character.

“We are growing like wildfire,” Kathleen O’Toole, Hillsdale assistant provost for K-12, said in a Dec. 9 virtual town hall. “And we’re careful about our growth because we want to make sure every school that we are working closely with is an excellent school. It’s hard to start a school. It’s really hard to start an excellent classical school, but it’s also really necessary.”

Hillsdale is far from alone. For three decades, conservatives have been building an alternative K-12 educational universe rooted in classical education. The parallel track is taking off as families flee public school systems’ pandemic mandates, leftist political activism and resistance to parental input.

“I think we are on the very precipice of a massive disruption in K-12, and the classical renewal movement is going to be on the receiving end with a lot of these families. It already is,” said Jeremy Wayne Tate, CEO of the Classical Learning Test, which offers classically based standardized exams.

Exhibit A is the rise of hundreds of classical academies, both charter and private Catholic and Christian schools. Some organizations offer virtual classical education and curricula designed for home schooling.

As its name suggests, classical education has its origins in ancient Greece and Rome. The emphases include the preservation and restoration of the liberal arts, including the “great books” and the traditions of Western civilization.

“Classical education is a commonsense approach to teaching, coupled with a curriculum that brings the best methods for reading instruction, mathematics instruction, cursive, sentence diagramming, all of those things that we know really work, with the best that Western civilization has produced,” said Ms. O’Toole. “The best books, the best thought.”

Students at classical academies are far more likely to encounter Latin and Greek than critical race theory. That selling point has become increasingly relevant as classrooms morph into ideological battlegrounds.

Republican state lawmakers have sought to counter the lurch to the left with legislation restricting, for example, instruction on “divisive concepts” or gender identity in younger grades. Teachers unions and the American Civil Liberties Union have opposed such measures.

Mr. Tate said he doubts such legislation could loosen the left’s grip on public education.

“The way I look at it is that a secular progressive school that is not allowed to teach CRT or gender ideology is still a secular progressive school,” said Mr. Tate. “These ideas didn’t just originate overnight. I think that they’ve been part of the DNA of the system for a long time.”

Enter the classical education revolution, which gained a foothold with the growth of the charter school movement in the 1990s, although some schools date back further.

The Association of Classical Christian Schools traces its roots to three schools founded in 1980 by three groups of parents in three states. The Idaho-based network, the nation’s largest, now has 304 member schools in 46 states.

The Classical Academies, based in San Diego County, Califonia, started its first public charter school in 1999. The network has since grown to seven schools with more than 5,000 students.

In New York City, the Bronx-based Classical Charter Schools serves students in grades K-8 through its four schools, the first of which opened in 2006. About 98% of its students are Black or Hispanic, and the network has a waiting list of 7,000, according to its website.

The Hillsdale network enrolls more than 14,000 students at its 21 member schools and 33 “curriculum” schools, which include charter and private schools. More than 8,000 students are on the waiting lists at the 54 affiliated schools.

Hillsdale runs the Hillsdale Academy, a private classical Christian school on the college’s campus in Michigan, but it does not operate any of its affiliated schools.

Mr. Tate said enrollment has shown “huge growth” during the pandemic and that many schools have a “massive waitlist.”

“With classical education and what I would describe as secular progressive education, it seems like every time parents are fairly presented with both options, they want classical education,” he said. “It’s focused on the cultivation of virtue. It’s focused on good character. I think every parent wants this for their child.”

Supporting such schools is an array of curriculum offerings. Hillsdale offers at no cost the 1776 Curriculum for grades K-12 that “provides teachers with guidance — not dictates — about how to plan and teach a given topic in American history or civics.”

The Heritage Foundation lists civics lessons on its Curricula Resource Initiative page that are available free of charge, including the Woodson Center’s 1776 Unites and Federalist Society videos on the U.S. Constitution.

Where there are classical academies, there must be teachers. Hillsdale announced in February that it would launch a master’s degree program in classical education.

“One of the greatest challenges that classical Christian schools and classical charter schools face today is finding qualified headmasters and administrators,” said David Diener, a former Hillsdale Academy headmaster and education lecturing professor. “This program helps to meet the need for trained headmasters by providing administrative training as part of the offered coursework.”

Another challenge is that the Biden administration, a staunch ally of teachers unions, has proposed more requirements for charter schools to receive federal grants. One proposal requires proof that the local school district has an “unmet demand.”

Tennessee Democrats are fighting an effort by Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to partner with Hillsdale to add 50 charter schools. The Democrats say state funding would be better spent on regular public schools.

Mary Hasson, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Republicans seeking a real revolution in K-12 education need to push for state per-pupil funding for public and private schools.

“I think parents have a renewed sense of urgency. I think they see things they didn’t see before. I think there’s much more openness to try something new,” Ms. Hasson said. “I also think it’s time that the conservative movement stopped apologizing for wanting to give parents alternatives.”

Classical education has a reputation for being elitist, Ms. O’Toole said, but the opposite is true.

“We think in Hillsdale classical schools that students can receive the very best in school, and they deserve the very best,” she said. “And there’s no reason the very best shouldn’t be available to every American child.”