Hillsdale College opened four new charter schools through the Barney Charter School Initiative since 2009. The college plans to open another 46 by 2022.
The two newest schools, located in Bentonville, Ariz., and Savannah, Ga., have only been open for a few months, but are already filling up spots. At a 700 person capacity each, the Savannah school has 322 students for K-6 and the Bentonville school has 385, with nine grades, K-8.
The first two schools were built in N.M. and Texas in 2009. Since last year, both schools have seen significant growth as well, with the former gaining 60 new students and the latter exceeding 700 students.
According to Phil Kilgore, director of the charter school development program, the goal of the charter school initiative at Hillsdale College is to build schools where grades K-12 can learn in the same liberal arts way as Hillsdale students. It is a way for classical values to be imparted to students at an age when they are most open to learning.
“Charters give these schools freedom from various aspects of the government laws,” Kilgore said. “Charter schools say, ‘if you give us freedom, we will run a school and produce better results.’”
“A lot goes into cultivating the schools,” Assistant Professor of History Terrence Moore said.
According to Moore, all the principals, teachers, and staff must be trained at three levels. This is done to ensure the transfer of the Hillsdale message to the students. Without the rigorous training, there will be no assurance that they will teach in the way that Hillsdale wants them to.
The curriculum at the charter schools differs from the Hillsdale curriculum in that it is rooted in the American experience, as opposed to the college’s Western tradition curriculum. This is done to show the importance of the American tradition and how the founders came to believe what they did.
“It is an education based on that of the founding fathers, both the education they had and the education they recommended,” Moore said.
Grade school students are taught in the liberal arts tradition: their phonics and arithmetic classes are taught in a specific, individual way, independent from the classic public school phonics and arithmetic classes.
“It is important for the new generation to learn the way the founders would have wanted. It will make a smarter people,” Moore said.
