Wall Street Journal - September 15, 1999
Many Christian Parents Opt For Religious Charter Schools
By DANIEL GOLDEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- At one of America's fastest-growing school systems, 44% of the teachers come from Bible colleges. Mothers pray in the school buildings. Students learn about Adam and Eve in science class, and are asked not to wear costumes to school on Halloween, in deference to parents who believe the holiday glorifies the devil.
Yet the National Heritage Academies aren't Christian private schools. Instead, they are a chain of state-funded charter schools offering back-to-basics education with a religious tinge -- free of charge.
Based in this Bible Belt stronghold, the for-profit National Heritage has burgeoned from one school with 174 students in 1995 to 22 schools with 8,600 students in two states today -- with a marketing campaign seemingly aimed at evangelical parents.
"We're like the auto industry in Detroit when the Japanese came in," says Mark Muller, chairman of the Grand Rapids Christian schools, where enrollment has fallen nearly 10% in six years. This drop, which he attributes partly to National Heritage, has prompted layoffs and talk of consolidation with a Christian-school group in another town.
What galls the Christian schools' faithful is that National Heritage founder and chairman J.C. Huizenga is one of their own. The soft-spoken, ruddy-faced businessman and Republican activist-cousin to AutoNation chairman and Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga, a small National Heritage investor himself -- attended private evangelical schools and married a Christian-schools teacher. On occasion, he has helped bring revivalist crusades to Grand Rapids.
J.C. Huizenga says he never intended to hurt Christian schools. "I'm still a donor," he notes. But if families can't afford tuition, he says, "I think we're a reasonable alternative."
Charter schools, which operate independently of local school districts, were intended to create a choice for parents discontented with traditional public schools. Under Michigan law, charter schools get almost as much per capita funding as area public schools -- nearly $6,000 in National Heritage's case.
It didn't occur to many people that tuition-burdened parents at religious schools would also welcome an alternative, particularly one featuring small classes, strict discipline and moral education. But today, charters are taking market share from fundamentalist schools, their predecessors as the hottest phenomenon in American education. And charters' smudging of the separation of church and state has stirred up an unlikely combination of opponents: private religious competitors and civil-liberties advocates.
"Charter schools are often a ruse for the kind of schooling that the Supreme Court has said violates the Constitution," says Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which is suing National Heritage for promoting religion.
Private-School Transfers
About one-tenth of the nation's 400,000-plus charter-school students come from private schools. But at National Heritage, 19.7% are private-school transfers. And that doesn't count any of the 17% or so of the student body who started at National Heritage in kindergarten, and might otherwise have opted for private school.
The phenomenon goes beyond National Heritage. At Marvin Winans Academy, one of several Detroit charters started by ministers, one-fourth of the students transferred from religious schools. The Rev. Robert J. Coverson, who runs a small Baptist school in Detroit, says he may have to close it because he has lost half of his students to charters.
Tom and Kathy Laarman switched three of their four children last year from Christian schools to Grand Rapids' Excel Charter Academy, National Heritage's first and largest school, where 28.7% of the students shifted from private schools. "We couldn't afford Christian schools, plain and simple," says Mrs. Laarman, a social worker, who would have paid $18,000 in tuition for all her children. "And the charter schools provide a very good education. If I was starting all over again with little ones, they would be the choice."
ACLU's Allegations
One of the children, 12-year-old Carey, returned to a Christian school this year because she wanted to play sports Excel does not offer. Still, she says, "Excel was great. Your feelings never got hurt. Everyone was very respectful."
Both of Jeffrey Seaver's children attend another National Heritage school, Vanguard Charter Academy in Grand Rapids. He is a plaintiff in the Civil Liberties Union of Michigan lawsuit, now pending in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids. It alleges a pattern of violating the separation of church and state -- including weekly prayer sessions held by school mothers on site, a fourth-grade teacher reading the Bible to her class, a Baptist church holding evening meetings in the school rent-free, and a Baptist minister delivering a sermon at a staff training session. The goal of the suit is to ban what the plaintiffs consider overt promotion of religion at the schools.
Mr. Seaver, who used to head Vanguard's moral-focus committee, says he urged National Heritage to cancel the minister's speech, to no avail. "The atmosphere has been such that religion is encouraged," he says. "This is a mission and ideology J.C. Huizenga feels he has the power and the right to promote."
From Mr. Huizenga down, many National Heritage administrators and teachers are steeped in evangelism. Still, Mr. Huizenga and other National Heritage officials say they respect the church-state boundary -- without being intimidated by it. National Heritage President Peter Ruppert acknowledges that the Baptist sermon was inappropriate, and the mothers have temporarily stopped meeting at Vanguard. Still, under an 18-page set of guidelines drawn up by a National Heritage lawyer, parent groups can still pray at the schools. Churches may still hold services there -- as long as they pay rent. "We won't shy away from teaching values just because of the threat that people will call us a religious institution," says Mr. Ruppert.
Michigan law gives universities the right to grant public-school charters. Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., which charters most of the National Heritage schools, remains unconcerned about their religious overtones. Pat Sandro, the university's special assistant for charter schools, says the region's religious culture permeates the traditional public schools as well. At Grand Rapids public schools, where he used to be superintendent, "every board meeting opened with a prayer," he says. Mr. Sandro, whose daughter teaches at Vanguard, adds that National Heritage "operates some of the best schools I've ever seen."
American Flags
Those schools -- 20 in Michigan and two in North Carolina -- all look much the same: an L-shaped, wood-frame building with a plastic climbing structure in the playground. Along the cheerful, well-scrubbed hallways, the lockers don't have locks and the art features American flags and medieval knights.
Their knapsacks hanging in a row from the classroom wall, neatly dressed children -- no blue jeans, miniskirts or dyed hair allowed -- sit with hands folded at their desks. They address their teachers as "Mr.," Mrs.," or "Dr." as they are drilled in phonics, math and Core Knowledge, a canon developed by "Cultural Literacy" guru E.D. Hirsch Jr.
In an Excel conference room, Les Bartell drums his fingers on a wooden table. "This isn't a marble tabletop," says Mr. Bartell, who has two children attending the school. "We don't have three shades of terra cotta and brick outside. But it's a clean, safe, functional facility."
The charter threat has forced many religious schools into a fight-or-switch dilemma. Some are responding with more marketing. The Grand Rapids Christian group never used to reveal its scores on standardized tests, citing religious strictures against boasting. Yielding to competitive pressure, now it tells prospects that its schools have the second-highest scores in the Grand Rapids area on the ACT college-admissions test.
On the other hand, Heritage Christian Academy in Denver (no relation to National Heritage) plans to join the charter tide. The school, which was affiliated with a predominantly African-American church, shut down last June and will reopen as a charter in September 2000. According to Pastor Debbie Stafford, its development director, the new school will have an "elective hour" when students may attend Bible clubs. "We believe we will still be able to provide the type of faith/moral environment that will let the kids know they have a special purpose in life," she says.
Huizenga's Effort
Originally, David Koetje, superintendent of the 11 schools in the Grand Rapids Christian group, also thought charter schools could be compatible with Christian education. After Michigan adopted its charter-schools law in 1994, Mr. Koetje approached Mr. Huizenga, offering to staff charter schools if Mr. Huizenga would pay for the buildings.
Mr. Huizenga expressed serious interest. As owner of American Litho Inc., a printing-plate maker, he felt public-school graduates were seldom prepared for the work force. But Mr. Koetje had second thoughts and backed off, worried that the schools would have to be too secular to qualify for funding. "Our becoming involved in a public school would tear our soul out of us," he says.
So Mr. Huizenga forged ahead alone, competing with his might-have-been partner. National Heritage's recruitment video features a parent who transferred her children from parochial schools. Its billboard slogan -- "Academic Excellence, Moral Focus, Tuition-Free" -- infuriated the religious schools. To appease his old friends, Mr. Huizenga softened "tuition free" to "no cost." National Heritage is also redoing the recruitment video. But its new mantra, "A Private School Education for the Masses," strikes Mr. Koetje as misrepresenting the charters as private schools.
According to Mr. Koetje, some parents at his schools continue to receive recruitment fliers from National Heritage, despite the company's promise to remove their names from its mailing lists. National Heritage officials blame a computer glitch that is being corrected.
National Heritage has also tapped public schools. In 1996, Grand Valley State approved the opening of two schools in the town of Holland, Mich., including Vanderbilt Charter Academy, a National Heritage venture. That year, the Holland public schools lost so many students, including 110 to Vanderbilt, that their superintendent persuaded Mr. Sandro to declare Holland off-limits to new charters. Even so, the Holland schools have suffered a $3 million funding cut and staff layoffs over three years.
Plans for More
National Heritage plans to open 18 more schools next fall, including four in upstate New York. Its goal: 200 schools by the year 2006. Most of the schools are located at the fringe of cities, and their student bodies reflect an urban-suburban mix: 28% percent are minorities and 20% qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Parental demand is so great that students are selected by lottery at most schools. Even Mr. Huizenga's son was placed on a waiting list. (Mr. Huizenga's wife has since decided to home-school him.)
National Heritage has yet to break even; last year, it had a loss of $1.5 million. Each school starts as kindergarten-through-fifth, and adds one grade each year until the eighth, with maximum enrollment of 650. At that capacity, according to Mr. Ruppert, the schools turn a profit.
Capital for buildings is National Heritage's biggest hurdle. While its frame structures are cheaper than typical public-school buildings, they still cost $2.8 million each, plus an additional $1.2 million for a new wing when enrollment tops 400.
Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools can't issue municipal bonds. So Mr. Huizenga has contributed more than $40 million from his own pocket and in loan guarantees. He has also borrowed $50 million from family and friends.
National Heritage saves money by forgoing buses and cafeterias. Parents chauffeur children, who eat at their desks. Teachers, who are nonunion, are paid less than at traditional public schools; year-end cash bonuses or stock options worth up to $2,000 depend on student test scores, parent evaluations -- and staying within budget. Despite parental pressure, National Heritage has not opened a high school, which would be more expensive than elementary school.
Longer Days
The schools have seven-hour days, longer than most public schools. Over the past two years, they have generally surpassed Grand Rapids public schools on the statewide assessment test, but have mixed results vs. the rest of the state.
Students are graded on moral focus, and teachers are expected to "exemplify the moral values we teach kids," says to Mr. Ruppert. Asked if he would hire an openly homosexual teacher, Mr. Huizenga says, "Personally, I don't believe a gay teacher is an appropriate teacher for a child."
National Heritage policy is to treat both evolution and the Biblical creation story as theories. Carolyn Thompson, a fifth-grade science teacher at Knapp Charter Academy and an evangelical Christian, says she believes in "creationism and then evolution from that point on" -- and teaches it that way in class.
Becky Bullen, a fourth-grade teacher at Knapp, told her students about dinosaurs last year -- and learned a lesson herself. Some parents protested that fossil evidence of dinosaurs, which became extinct 65 million years ago, contradicted their Biblical belief that God created the world 6,000 years ago. Since then, Ms. Bullen has dropped the dinosaurs and says, "I basically try to steer clear of any hot issues."