School of Classical Education Act

Introduction

Americans must jointly reform of higher education, teacher education, and K-12 education. We need properly educated K-12 students to ensure we have students truly ready for citizenship, career, and college—and we need universities and education schools that will properly educate future teachers. More generally, every K-12 and higher education reform ultimately depends on the establishment of a body of teachers who believe that education reform is good and necessary, and the steady replacement of the too-large body of teachers determined to ignore or sabotage education reform. The keystone to education reform, the way to make sure that it actually extends to classroom practice, is the education of our educators.

Classical education is not the only means to achieve this goal—but it is the best available one in America in the 2020s. Classical schools reject the dysfunctional bureaucracies and pedagogies that afflict mainstream education in America—and their focus on moral character, civic virtue, the liberal arts, and Western civilization restores the finest traditions of Western and American education. Classical educators, both teachers and administrators, also have spent more than a generation building up practical knowledge of how to teach in their growing network of schools, and they are fully conversant with the latest educational research—although they are wise enough to exercise judgement about which research has value. Americans are pluralist by temperament, and they should not and will not simply adopt classical education as their only form of education. But Americans should reform education policy to foster classical education and classical schools.

Above all, Americans should work to increase the supply of potential teachers for classical schools. Classical schools would expand faster than they do now, save for the bottleneck of an insufficient supply of properly educated teachers. While private universities such as the University of Dallas already do an excellent job of educating classical educators, we need more schools of classical education—and, above all, cost-effective, public schools of education, that will make it possible for would-be teachers with limited financial resources to make a career in classical education.

Our model School of Classical Education Act outlines how state legislatures can direct public support toward classical education. It establishes an independent School of Classical Education (SCE) in a state university, which will have the administrative autonomy that allows it to teach proper courses on classical education. The SCE will also be tasked to report annually to state policymakers. This will allow SCE personnel to report if the education establishment has attempted to abrogate their autonomy or subvert their mission.

The model Act aims to facilitate an existing movement to regularize the position of classical education within the states. Florida already has directed state monies to support the Flagler College Institute for Classical Education, while in Arizona, the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University has established a Classical Liberal Education and Civic Leadership Masters of Arts program. Florida’s Department of Education, meanwhile, now issues a Classical Education Teaching Certificate. Our Act contributes to the best existing practices of American education.

This model Act also aims to complement our model School of Intellectual Freedom Act, model Core Curriculum Act, and model General Education Act. All of these will function to increase the supply of properly educated K-12 teachers, by redirecting colleges toward teaching courses in Western and American civics and humanities. These other model acts, however, are not explicitly focused to act as (in effect) a reformed education school. This model Act, in complement with our other model acts, will make sure that reform of higher education connects with and reinforces reform of K-12 education.

Model Legislative Text

Section A

1. The {School of Classical Education} is established as an independent academic unit within {Flagship Institution of Higher Education}, physically located in the college of arts and sciences. The School shall conduct teaching and research in the principles and pedagogy of classical education.
2. The School shall establish bylaws requiring the School to do all of the following:
   1. Educate students for careers as teachers and administrators in classical schools, which are schools constituted, practicing, and providing professional learning to its educational staff in a classical school model that emphasizes the development of students in the principles of moral character and civic virtue through a well-rounded education in the liberal arts and sciences that is based on the classical trivium stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric and rooted in the classic texts of Western civilization.
   2. Educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth;
   3. Affirm its duty to equip students with the skills, habits, and dispositions of mind they need to reach their own informed conclusions on matters of social and political importance;
   4. Affirm the value of intellectual diversity in higher education and aspire to enhance the intellectual diversity of the university;
   5. Affirm a commitment to create a community dedicated to an ethic of civil and free inquiry, which respects the intellectual freedom of each member, supports individual capacities for growth, and welcomes the differences of opinion that naturally shall exist in a public university community.
      
      The requirements prescribed under divisions (A)(2)(a) to (d) of this section shall take priority over any other bylaws adopted by the School.
3. The School shall be able to receive and administer private and external donations and gifts.
4. Monies appropriated to the School, and all private and external donations to the center, shall be used only for the direct operation of the School and may not be used for indirect costs of the university. 
5. The board of trustees of the university may name the School in accordance with the philanthropic naming policies and practices of the university.

Section B

The School shall be an independent academic unit physically located at the college of arts and sciences with the authority to house tenure-track faculty who hold their appointments within the center. Faculty appointed to the School shall not be required, but may, hold joint appointments within any other division of the university. Not fewer than ten tenure-track faculty positions shall be allotted to teach under the School, to be filled through external recruitment. No faculty outside of the School shall have the authority to block faculty hires into the center.

Section C

1. The School shall offer instruction in all of the following:
   1. Ancient and modern classical education pedagogy, including the classical trivium stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric and the classical quadrivium stages of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
   2. Great works of the Western humanities, including exemplary works from ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel, Medieval Europe, Renaissance and Baroque Europe, and Modern Europe.
   3. Great works of the American humanities, including exemplary works of literature, music, visual arts, and performing arts from colonial America, nineteenth century America, and twentieth century America.
   4. Great works of the Western civic tradition, including speeches by figures such as Demosthenes, Cicero, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
   5. Pedagogy instruction for teaching Greek and Latin.

Section D

1. Not later than {December 31, 20XX}, the talent, compensation, and governance committee of the board of trustees of the university shall appoint, with the advice and consent of the senate, a seven-member center academic council. An initial member shall not begin service until confirmed by the senate. Four members shall form a quorum.
2. The academic council shall be comprised of scholars with relevant expertise and experience. Not more than one member of the council may be an employee of the university. Best efforts shall be made to have not fewer than three members of the advisory board be from {State}.
3. Three members of the academic council shall serve initial terms of two years and four members shall serve initial terms of four years, which the members shall determine at their first meeting, and select replacements for vacant seats.

Section E

1. The academic council established under division (D) of this section shall conduct a nationwide search for candidates for the director of the School and shall strictly adhere to all relevant state and federal laws. The academic council shall submit to the president of the university a list of finalists from which the president shall select and appoint a director, subject to approval by the board of trustees. Future directors shall be chosen in the same manner.
2. The director shall have the protection of tenure or tenure eligibility. The director shall consult with the dean of the college of arts and sciences; however, the director shall report directly to the provost or the president of the university.
3. The director shall have the sole and exclusive authority to invite guest speakers, to manage the recruitment and hiring process and to extend offers for employment for all faculty and staff of the center, and to terminate employment of all staff. The director shall oversee, develop, and approve the School’s curriculum. The School shall be granted the authority to offer courses and develop certificate, minor, and major programs as well as graduate programs, and offer degrees.

Section F

The director of the School shall submit an annual report to the board of trustees of the university and the general assembly. The report shall provide a full account of the School’s achievements, opportunities, challenges, and obstacles in the development of this academic unit.

Section G

If any provision of this chapter, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this chapter and the application of its provisions to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected thereby.

The National Association of Scholars, in consultation with other supporters and friends of the Civics Alliance, drafted these model bills to translate into legislative language the principles in the Civics Alliance’s Civics Curriculum Statement & Open Letter. Just as these bills have been drafted with the expectation that different states will modify them as they see fit, they also have been drafted with the expectation that not every supporter of the Civics Alliance will endorse these bills or every part of them. Individual Civics Alliance signatories and supporters should not be assumed to have endorsed these bills, unless they say so explicitly.