Hillsdale College announced Thursday it will begin to offer its support to classical charter schools in the state of Tennessee.
Through a partnership with American Classical Education, Inc. (ACE), Hillsdale will provide assistance to classical charters in the state entirely free of charge.
“The demand for classical K-12 education continues to rise,” said Joel Schellhammer, CEO of ACE, a new charter management organization, adding:
Over the last two decades, Hillsdale College has become one of the leaders in the classical education revival. ACE is looking forward to working with Hillsdale and taking advantage of everything it has to offer to Tennessee students and their families.
Kathleen O’Toole, assistant provost for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, said in a statement that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) visited the college and was “impressed with the College’s ongoing efforts in supporting K-12 schools with classical curriculum and training for school boards, leaders, and teachers.”
O’Toole explained the nature of classical education.
“Here at the College’s K-12 Education office, we help schools to provide the type of education that all Americans both need and deserve — one that is rooted in the liberal arts and sciences, offers a firm grounding in civic virtue, and cultivates moral character,” she said.
“The question of education has become, in many ways, the central issue of a discussion of who we are.” — Dr. Matthew Spalding on the Show-Me Institute Podcast @ShowMe. https://t.co/1pcZSyBT6B pic.twitter.com/K8quG0U8na
— Hillsdale College (@Hillsdale) January 22, 2022
On Monday, Lee unveiled a $52.6 billion budget plan that seeks to put an additional $1 billion toward K-12 education, including $32 million toward charter school facilities.
Hillsdale’s Barney Charter School Initiative (BCSI) launched in 2010 and collaborated to offer its first enrollments in the fall of 2012. BCSI has helped dozens of classical charter schools to open with more than 14,500 K-12 students now served, to date, and over 8,000 students on waiting lists.
The college notes on the BCSI website:
Our nation’s founders knew, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, that “an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Today’s public schools are too often poor stewards of their trust, caught between moral and cultural relativism, conflicting views about education’s purposes, and tangled layers of testing and oversight from multi-level bureaucracies. Hillsdale’s Barney Charter School Initiative provides an effective alternative by collaborating with local citizens throughout the country to found classical charter schools built on the best curricular and instructional traditions.
In addition to offering support for the development of classical charter schools, Hillsdale College has more recently provided assistance and resources for homeschooling and private school families as well.
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kathleen O’Toole” by Hillsdale College.
