Michigan has long understood that schools are not abstractions. They are local institutions built around communities, families, teachers, habits, expectations and the daily formation of children. That is why the national growth of classical education deserves attention here. It is not merely another school-choice story. It is a demand signal.
The first thing you notice in a classical school is often the order of the place. A school leader stands at the front door, welcoming each child by name and shaking every hand before the day begins. Walk toward a classroom and a student meets you at the threshold. They look you in the eye, shake your hand, and say, “Welcome to our classroom.” They are the class greeter that day, a small responsibility that rotates through the children. It does not take long to see that something here is very different.
Inside, the morning begins with habits older than most modern education debates. The children stand and recite a poem they have committed to memory, perhaps Stevenson or Longfellow. They run through the sounds of the language, the rules of arithmetic and the names of the states and rivers. None of it is filmed for a dashboard. None of it produces a data point that a state accountability system scores. And it is precisely that ordinary, deliberate work of forming a mind that hundreds of thousands of American families are now seeking.
Parents recognize this kind of education because it feels less like a program and more like school.
For a generation, education reform has focused on management: testing regimes, accountability ratings, data dashboards, turnaround plans and school-choice programs. Those tools have real value. Testing exposes gaps. Accountability helps communities direct support where it is needed. Choice expands options for families.
But the classical school boom suggests that many parents are not merely searching for better schools. They are searching for a clearer answer to the question of what a school is for.
The growth of classical schools adds an important dimension to that conversation. Classical education now spans more than 1,500 public, private and charter schools serving nearly 700,000 students, with Fordham reporting 264 new classical schools since 2019. In many communities, families are crossing town, joining waitlists and making sacrifices to choose models built around phonics and grammar, history told in chronological order, literature read as literature and the disciplines of Latin, logic and rhetoric. They seek uniforms, teacher-led instruction and a clear answer to the question of what an educated child should know.
This is not a rejection of public education or the dedicated teachers who serve in it. Many district schools do excellent work in their communities. The classical school boom is better understood as evidence that many families want an additional model within American education, one with a coherent curriculum, ordered classrooms, serious books and a shared sense of purpose.
Michigan should understand this instinct. The state has a strong charter-school tradition, a long civic memory of local institutions, and, through Hillsdale College, one of the country’s most important centers of classical education. Hillsdale’s Barney Charter School Initiative has helped seed dozens of classical charters with curriculum and training. But the movement has no single headquarters.
Great Hearts has grown across Arizona and Texas by offering a content-rich, tuition-free, liberal arts education anchored in Socratic discussion and primary texts. Catholic schools are exploring classical models. Christian academies are expanding. Homeschool co-ops and new charter schools are bringing this approach into public education itself.
Look at what these schools put in front of students. In the early grades, attention is trained through memorization, recitation, songs, poems, and stories. Older students encounter Homer and Shakespeare, Frederick Douglass and the Federalist Papers, Austen and Lincoln as part of the rich inheritance they are entitled to receive. Latin becomes a discipline of the mind.
The common thread is parents who want their children to receive an education with strong content, structure and purpose. That demand highlights an opportunity: even with strong management and data systems, schools can benefit from a clearer curricular vision and a deeper answer to the question, “What is this education for?”
The classical school boom is not nostalgia. It is families returning to foundational questions about what children should know and what habits schools should help cultivate. Schools should teach children to read well, write clearly, reason honestly, know their country’s story, master real knowledge and engage seriously with enduring works of literature, history, philosophy and science.
Not every classical school will succeed. Staffing, governance and resources matter. The standard must remain high. Families deserve schools that are well-led, well-governed and academically excellent.
The families filling these classrooms are not chasing choice for its own sake. They want schools with identity and purpose, and they are right to want it. The question is no longer whether the demand is real. It is whether we are willing to build schools worthy of it.
John A. Burtka III is former automotive industry executive and is currently involved in an effort to found a public classical charter school.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: What the rise of classical schools says about what parents want | Opinion
Reporting by John Burtka III / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By John Burtka III | USA TODAY Network
