A coalition of conservative Christian educators and advocacy groups is moving to create or convert 5,000 classical Christian schools over the next decade, aiming to enroll 1.5 million students nationwide, as a rapid expansion of taxpayer-funded private school scholarships reshapes the education landscape.
The Association of Classical Christian Schools, which formed a coalition last year with groups including Turning Point Education and the Heritage Foundation, calls its campaign the «Battle for the American School.» ACCS President David Goodwin said the goal is to capture a share of public funding and educate future leaders through Christian schools. «It sounds like a very ambitious goal, but this money has never been there before,» he said.
The push is being accelerated by state programs that direct public money to families for private education expenses. This summer, Texas began rolling out $1 billion in such funding. Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have approved a cascade of similar programs over the past six years, and half of school-age children in the United States are now eligible to apply for state money to attend private schools. Most private schools in the country are religious, and directing public funds to them raises questions about church-state separation while fulfilling a long-sought goal for Christian conservatives who lobbied for the money.
In Texas, Keith Castello, a classical Christian school administrator, spends much of his time scouting real estate — empty office parks, a shopping mall, an old church — for new campuses. He is launching three classical Christian schools this fall under his Kyrie Christian Academy brand, part of the broader ACCS network. «I have been praying for 28 years for things that are coming to fruition right now,» Castello said.
The schools offer a liberal arts education with an emphasis on virtue and a biblical worldview. At Covenant Christian Academy, an ACCS school in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, students in blue oxford shirts and plaid skirts gather for chapel, where the principal speaks on prudence. By fifth grade they study Latin, and in their final year they present a senior thesis. Tuition there is now around $20,000 a year, a sum Castello said was a struggle for his own family and beyond the reach of most members of his Southern Baptist church.
Critics warn that the expansion could drain resources from public schools, which educate students of all religious backgrounds and political persuasions. When a student leaves a public school, the state money allocated to educate that student goes with them.
The ACCS has ties to the Trump administration. It was founded by Doug Wilson, a conservative Idaho pastor and writer who has described himself as a Christian nationalist and has drawn attention for preaching at a Pentagon worship service and advocating repeal of women's voting rights. Wilson helped start the Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, in 1981, one of the first in the modern classical Christian movement, and founded ACCS in 1994. At the group's June conference in Atlanta, he told a ballroom of about 1,000 leaders that education is «the central cultural battle» and that «classical Christian education is a hot center of the conflict of our time.»
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who co-wrote the 2022 bestseller «Battle for the American Mind» with Goodwin and sent his children to ACCS schools before joining the cabinet, remains a booster. The Pentagon recently introduced a form of classical education into government-run schools on military bases.
The ACCS version of classical education draws on ancient and medieval teaching methods with a strong focus on Western Christian history, and the Oxford-educated writer C.S. Lewis is a guiding figure. Goodwin said the coalition intends to use the new funding streams to expand that model at a scale the movement has not previously attempted.