Some SC conservatives say their public schools are ‘woke.’ They’re embracing this alternative

This is the third installment in Unchartered Territory, an ongoing series by The State Media Co. about South Carolina’s changing charter school landscape.

An imposing K-12 school complex has risen from the dirt along traffic-choked South Lake Drive in the shadow of downtown Lexington

American Leadership Academy Lexington, which promises a patriotic education in a moral and wholesome environment, opened to considerable fanfare in August as the largest brick-and-mortar charter school in the state.

Just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable that a new charter school in the heart of Lexington 1, one of South Carolina’s premier school districts, could generate such immense interest.

Lexington 1’s award-winning schools, such as Lake Murray Elementary and River Bluff High, have fueled the economic explosion that over the last 30 years has transformed the community from sleepy Columbia suburb to bustling business hub.

But the rise of the national parental rights movement, which has inspired families frustrated with classroom lessons and COVID-19 restrictions to spurn their children’s public schools, threatens to cut into Lexington 1’s supremacy.

The proof is in the enrollment data. After growing at a rate of about 420 students annually for the past decade, or roughly one elementary school per year, Lexington 1 opened in August down 1,000 students, according to 10-day headcounts.

The district’s loss was American Leadership Academy’s gain. The new charter school opened at full capacity with more than 2,000 students and a waiting list of roughly 1,200, according to ALA officials.

“There’s a large appetite from parents who are seeking a more traditional education for their children, one that doesn’t shove wokeness down their throats,” said Rep. RJ May, R-Lexington, a leader of the ultra-conservative South Carolina Freedom Caucus, which in 2022 sued Lexington 1 over its alleged indoctrination of students with “critical race theory-derived ideas.”

The growing conservative backlash against neighborhood public schools has created an opening for charter school alternatives like American Leadership Academy that enforce strict dress codes, limit technology and use a curriculum rooted in Western literature and philosophy.

While not inherently partisan, these so-called traditional or classical schools have developed a conservative patina in recent years as Republican thought leaders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts sing their praises.

Ruby red South Carolina, with its surging student population, vocal parental rights faction and charter-friendly authorizing environment, has become a prime destination for such operators.

The number of students enrolled in traditional charters more than tripled last fall to 4,100 when three schools, including ALA Lexington, opened their doors. Five more traditional charters are expected to open next school year and at least two-dozen others are in the pipeline. If those plans come to fruition, traditional charters could within a decade enroll as many students as some of the largest public school districts in South Carolina.

Privately-operated public schools without geographic residence boundaries Taxpayer-funded, free to attend and accountable to state and national education standards Exempt from certain regulations that govern neighborhood public schools in order to spur innovation in how students are educated Often have a particular educational focus or theme, such as STEM or entrepreneurship, and may cater to students with disabilities or those who need a more flexible schedule

Such rapid growth, fueled by taxpayer dollars, stands to transform the state’s education landscape.

Unlike the grassroots mom-and-pop charters that have historically opened in South Carolina, the current wave of schools is not primarily homegrown. Many, including American Leadership Academy, are run by out-of-state management companies that aim to make a buck on the backs of South Carolina taxpayers.

These companies, some of which had previously viewed expansion into South Carolina as a financial risk, are giving it another look in light of recent changes to the way charter schools are funded.

That prospect worries public education advocates, who warn an explosion of traditional schools threatens to exacerbate political polarization, increase school segregation and turn back the clock of education and social progress.

Carol Burris, director of the Network for Public Education, last year co-authored a report sounding the alarm about what she calls a “new breed” of charter school designed to serve as the “training grounds for the next generation of conservative warriors and a handy platform for spreading far-right ideology.”

The report details the connections many traditional charters have to Republican politicians and donors, criticizes their Eurocentric curriculum and relatively homogenous student bodies, and alleges their instructional methods sometimes blur the line between church and state.

“They are schools that are trying to attract predominantly white parents who want their kids to have an education similar to what their grandparents had in the 1950s and ‘60s,” Burris said. “And they’re finding a market.”

‘This is what public education was ... intended to be’

American Leadership Academy Lexington’s formal kickoff ceremony, held outside under a large white pavilion, had the feel of a tent revival.

Student recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance and national anthem gave way to impassioned speeches by school leaders about the importance of patriotism, morality and supporting family values.

Numerous Republican politicians, including Gov. Henry McMaster and state Superintendent Ellen Weaver, attended to show their support.

Earlier in the day, they’d toured the “classically inspired” upper school building, where ALA’s vision, mission statement and R.A.I.S.E. values of respect, accountability, integrity, service and excellence are emblazoned on the foyer wall in the charter network’s red-white-and-blue palette.

ALA Lexington’s upper school boasts dozens of classrooms and a spacious “cafenasium,” but conspicuously lacks a central library. (At American Leadership Academy, books are only available for checkout from teachers’ individual collections, which are subject to vetting by the school administration).

In a speech to parents and school staff, McMaster delighted in the school’s name, colors and instructional emphasis.

“My view is if you need to understand things there’s three places to go,” he told the rapt crowd. “The Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”

Weaver, who had declared six weeks earlier at the national Moms for Liberty summit that saving the country must start with saving the schools, lauded ALA Lexington as a “beacon” for public education and said it gave her hope for the future of South Carolina and the nation.

“When I listen to the values that you all are built on here at ALA,” she said. “I can’t help but think that this is what public education was always intended to be.”

For parents like Summer Adams, who believe public schools have become fixated on social justice at the expense of academic rigor, having an option like American Leadership Academy is a welcome alternative.

Adams, a Lexington resident who enrolled her son at ALA Lexington this school year, regards the growing interest in traditional schools as a rebuke of the present state of public education.

“We’re seeing parents speak up and wake up to what’s happening in schools,” she said in an interview with The State. “We’re fed up, we’re sick and tired and we just want something better for our kids.”

Charter Institute leads SC’s traditional push

The view that more traditional schools can “save” public education from malign influences has undergirded the classical charter movement from the start.

Hillsdale College, a small conservative Christian school in rural Michigan that has been the movement’s most prominent patron, originally billed its Barney Charter School Initiative as an effort to save public education from 100 years of corrupting progressivism.

Its mission statement described public schools as “among the most important battlegrounds in our war to reclaim our country” and advocated for “a significant campaign of classical school planting” to achieve that aim and “redeem American public education.”

In South Carolina, Charter Institute at Erskine CEO and Superintendent Cameron Runyan has been the architect of the state’s traditional charter planting effort.

Runyan, an ALA Lexington parent, has been working behind the scenes for years to bring American Leadership Academy and other like-minded operators to South Carolina, while growing the charter school district he helped launch in 2017 into the state’s largest sponsor of charter schools.

Today, the Charter Institute, an affiliate of Erskine College, a private evangelical Christian school in Due West, sponsors 28 schools, including all of South Carolina’s traditional charters. Charter Institute schools together enroll more than 25,000 students and could soon serve more than double that number as the approved schools in its pipeline open.

Once those approved schools are up and running, Runyan has expressed a desire to help launch charters in other states.

“I want to get those next 30,000 students in our buildings and get us up to 60 to 70,000 students that are being educated in what we believe is the right way to educate children,” he told The State last month. “And if I get to 70,000 and decide my time and energy can be better used somewhere else, then I’m certainly never going to close those doors.”

Toward that end, Runyan and other Charter Institute leaders have formed an organization called Teach Right Traditional Schools that has been working to open traditional charter schools in Tennessee.

According to paperwork the group filed, Teach Right aims to help students “develop moral character and academic excellence” while instilling the “A.M.E.R.I.C.A.N. virtues” of accountability, mindfulness, excellence, respect, integrity, courage, action, and noble-mindedness, an apparent riff on American Leadership Academy’s R.A.I.S.E. values.

The Charter Institute’s leaders abruptly suspended the Teach Right project in January, around the time state lawmakers caught wind of it and began raising concerns about the potential misuse of South Carolina taxpayer dollars. The powerful House budget committee subsequently passed a one-year measure prohibiting charter school authorizers, such as the Charter Institute, from spending public dollars to establish or manage schools in other states.

Runyan has denied any wrongdoing and said he pulled the plug on the project due to time constraints.

Curriculum is knowledge-based (i.e. learning hard facts) rather than skills-based Emphasis on morality and virtue in addition to academics Pro-American approach that prioritizes Western history and philosophy and its influence on America’s founding Traditional classroom environment rather than “student-centered learning” (i.e. students sit in desks arranged in rows with teacher as authority figure at front of class) Dress and grooming codes enforced School culture requires decorum, respect and discipline Use of technology is limited

SC to get a Moms for Liberty-backed school

Teach Right’s planned foray into the Tennessee charter school space follows the path forged by Hillsdale College, which in 2022 announced an ambitious plan to open 50 classical charters in the Volunteer State.

That project fizzled after a local TV station aired a “hidden-camera video” of Hillsdale’s president disparaging teachers and teacher training programs, but the charter management company formed to operate those schools lives on.

American Classical Education, headquartered in Nashville, will open its first South Carolina school this fall.

Ashley River Classical Academy, which counts among its founding board members three leaders in the Charleston County chapter of Moms for Liberty, hopes to operate out of a church in the Mount Pleasant area.

Hillsdale will provide Ashley River with curriculum, consulting and professional development free of charge, according to its charter.

Hillsdale’s 1776 curriculum, a collection of American history and civics lessons built on the fundamental principle that “America is an exceptionally good country,” has been criticized for its skeptical treatment of Progressive Era reforms and New Deal and Great Society programs, which are presented as departures from America’s founding ideals.

In addition to its curriculum, Hillsdale directs K-12 educators to a variety of resources on its website, including an 11-part online course that amplifies conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election, downplays the “January 6 quote-unquote insurrection” and describes the red state resistance to mask-wearing during the pandemic as “probably the greatest act of civil disobedience in American history.”

“What should encourage conservatives is that they own all of the American symbols,” the course’s instructor remarks in his final lecture. “The Left has willingly given them up. The Left hates America.”

Hillsdale did not make any of its employees available for an interview, but in the past has denied its charters push a political agenda.

Kathleen O’Toole, the college’s assistant provost for K-12 education, last year penned an op-ed excoriating the Network for Public Education’s report on traditional charter schools as “baseless and entirely political in motivation.”

Her piece disputes claims that classical charters advance right-wing ideas and promote religion while asserting that the movement has made a “pivotal difference” in American education.

Some traditional schools have, however, taken sides in the culture war, as seen in their adoption of the vernacular of the conservative parental rights movement.

American Leadership Academy founder Glenn Way, for example, emphasizes that his charter network puts parents first — even before students.

Way, a former Republican state lawmaker from Utah who has opened more than two dozen schools across the country, traces the origin of his charter empire to a decades-old campaign battle he waged with a teachers union that opposed his educational philosophy.

Speaking to families at ALA Lexington’s grand opening in August, Way portrayed himself as one of them – a parent dissatisfied with the education status quo who wanted something better for his children.

He told them that unlike neighborhood public schools, which often instill values contrary to what parents teach at home, American Leadership Academy existed to bolster and reinforce the family unit.

“The best thing that we can do is to support everything that is moral and wholesome in the home,” Way said. “In the 35 hours that we have your children, we are not going to undermine you and everything you’re trying to do.”

Republicans sour on public education

While Americans of all political stripes report lower confidence in public education post-pandemic, the decline is far more dramatic among Republicans.

Only 9% of Republicans now report having a great deal of confidence in public schools compared to 25% of independents and 43% of Democrats, according to an annual Gallup poll that asks respondents about their faith in various U.S. institutions.

The stark partisan divide over public education is a relatively new phenomenon. As recently as 2019, Democrats and Republicans had virtually the same level of confidence in public schools.

But as Republican frustrations with pandemic-era policies, such as distance learning and masking, have evolved to encompass critiques of LGBTQ+ library books and lessons about race, public schools have emerged at the epicenter of America’s culture war.

Jack Schneider, a historian and education researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that’s not entirely surprising. Savvy political actors throughout history have often stoked fears about what public schools are teaching children to further their own ends.

The anti-communist fervor that swept the nation’s schools in the 1940s and ‘50s, for instance, shares many similarities with the present crusade against “woke indoctrination,” Schneider said.

“Schools can always be exploited, particularly because we actually don’t know what’s happening inside schools,” he said. “It’s easy to say: ‘You thought you knew what was happening in the schools, but you really don’t.’”

That’s especially true today, said Schneider, as public schools devote more instructional time to issues of race and gender while grappling to educate an increasingly diverse populace.

Those changes in focus, while viewed by many progressives as necessary or even overdue, have made public schools appear increasingly partisan to conservatives, Western Washington University history professor Johann Neem said.

Neem, an Indian immigrant who moved to the United States as a young child, is critical of what he sees as public schools’ abdication of their traditional role as couriers of a common American culture. He said rather than instilling national pride, many public schools today preach a divisive multiculturalism that highlights our differences rather than what we share.

“This idea that we all belong to this story rather than we each have separate stories is being lost,” said Neem, author of “Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America.” “I don’t want immigrants to be told you need a Latin American history or a Christian history or a white history. What I want is a world where those stories and all their complexity — the good, the bad and the ugly — are ours.”

An alternative for conservative families

Adams, the Lexington mother whose teenage son attends ALA Lexington, had high hopes for the local public schools when she moved to the area with her family a few years ago.

The Washington state transplant had heard rave reviews of Lexington 1 and was impressed by River Bluff High School’s campus and facilities.

A staunch conservative, she assumed schools in a deep red state like South Carolina would be preferable to ones on the West Coast.

“We were just overall looking for a very different environment,” Adams said. “But I found I was fighting the same problems we were fighting there.”

History class was an opportunity for teachers to talk primarily about racism and oppression, she said. English class discussions were a springboard for instructors to encourage COVID-19 vaccines and masking.

“(Students are) getting told what to think and that this is the only way to think,” Adams said. “That was a huge red flag for us.”

She brought her concerns to the district, but said she couldn’t get straight or satisfying answers.

So this year, in search of a more traditional and academically rigorous education, Adams moved her son to ALA Lexington.

“I appreciate the openness and the honesty and the almost willingness (of ALA) to share exactly what they’re going to be learning,” she said. “With Lexington 1, no one ever really had an answer for me.”

Lexington 1 officials have repeatedly denied accusations of political bias.

School board chair Anne Marie Green, a Republican, took umbrage at the insinuation that progressive viewpoints were being slipped into student’s lessons and dismissed accusations that Lexington 1 was unresponsive to parents’ concerns.

She stressed that district parents are free to observe classes, request copies of lessons and flag library books they consider inappropriate for their children.

The district last year cut ties with a curriculum vendor South Carolina’s far-right Freedom Caucus accused of being “obsessed with race,” but has denied its use of the vendor’s materials violated the state’s anti-critical race theory law.

“The curriculum is based on state standards,” Green said. “And we don’t vary from that.”

Neem, the early American historian, said he empathizes with parents like Adams who feel alienated by public education’s evolution, but favors reform over retreat.

Rather than dismissing the complaints of conservative parents as racist or reactionary, Neem said public schools need to acknowledge how they’ve changed and try to bring disillusioned families back into the fold.

At the same time, he worries about the spread of traditional charter schools.

While he believes there’s value in classical texts and teaching methods, Neem is suspicious of the political aims of the broader movement and said he fears traditional schools could serve as escape valves for families that want to shield their children from the complexities of a pluralistic democracy.

An ardent believer in the power of public schools as integrative institutions, he argues they should be mainstream places that are welcoming to Americans of all political persuasions and said he worries support for public education will erode if our school choices become just another political signifier.

“If we are all socialized very differently in different schools separate from one another,” Neem said, “the possibility we won’t think of each other as fellow Americans and as more foreign than we already do is real.”

ALA Lexington’s growing pains

Back in Lexington, American Leadership Academy’s first year has been a mixed bag.

Some parents, including Adams, remain enamored of the school and report their children are thriving, while others have already pulled their kids out and returned to local public schools.

ALA Lexington shed nearly 200 students in its first five days and had lost 350 students, or about 17% of its initial enrollment, by the 45-day mark, South Carolina Department of Education data shows.

A spokeswoman for the school did not respond to a request for comment on the student departures.

Significant student turnover is not uncommon for new charter schools, especially traditional ones that stress discipline and conformity.

Within a month of opening, ALA Lexington had expelled four students and suspended another 17, according to disciplinary reports presented at the school’s September board meeting.

Other students have left on their own accord.

The reasons, according to interviews with parents and dozens of reviews posted online, include a lack of certified personnel, a “disproportionate” focus on discipline and a lack of resources for students with special needs.

One former ALA Lexington parent who asked to remain anonymous said her kindergartner was suspended for getting up out of his seat in class on multiple occasions.

The parent said when she asked how she could help the child to be more successful, an administrator responded that some kids just aren’t cut out for American Leadership Academy.

Being told that, the parent said, “gave me all I needed to hear.”