Classical education has become one of the brightest spots in the K–12 landscape. Once a niche movement, it now encompasses more than 1,500 public, private, and charter schools serving nearly 700,000 students. By 2035, projections suggest that number could reach 2,600, enrolling well over a million children. Families are flocking to these schools because of their rigorous liberal arts curriculum, their commitment to moral and intellectual formation, and their rejection of faddish pedagogies in favor of enduring works and ideas.
But there is a catch. Classical schools may be growing as fast as demand will allow—but only as fast as they can find teachers. In a new report that we co-authored for the American Enterprise Institute along with Riley Fletcher, The Achilles Heel of Classical Education, we reported our findings from a dozen or so interviews with classical school leaders across the country. In these conversations with leaders from Great Hearts Academies, Veritas School, Liberty Common School, Cincinnati Classical, and others, one theme emerged with striking consistency: There is no reliable pipeline of teachers prepared to staff classical schools. This teacher shortage, leaders across the sector acknowledge, is the primary constraint on the movement’s growth.
After all, unlike district schools, classical institutions cannot depend on colleges of education. Many leaders prefer to hire teachers with strong subject-matter expertise rather than traditionally trained teachers whose preparation might conflict with classical pedagogy or with a school’s culture. This preference makes sense. Classical schools want faculty steeped in literature, history, philosophy, and science, not constructivists or those lured by the siren song of faddish ideas like “21st century skills.” But the choice comes at a cost: the absence of a steady, credentialed stream of new teachers can force classical schools to cobble together a workforce from less conventional sources. Three sources of talent have emerged:
- Liberal arts graduates. For decades, classical schools have recruited from “great books” programs like St. John’s and Thomas Aquinas College. As demand grows, leaders are casting a wider net, seeking mission-aligned graduates through sympathetic professors and institutes at universities nationwide. Graduate students and early-career professors are another promising source. Before teaching at Scottsdale Prep, a Great Hearts charter school, James Hall taught philosophy at Arizona State University and Chandler Gilbert Community College. When he arrived at Great Hearts, he said he was “blown away” by the intelligence of his high schoolers and found that they were better equipped to discuss philosophical texts in depth than his college students.
- “Refugee” teachers. Another growing source is disillusioned public school veterans, whom Cincinnati Classical’s Michael Rose calls “refugee teachers.” Burned out on standardized test prep, bureaucratic mandates, and ideological fashions, they are drawn to schools that value coherent culture, enduring works, and character formation. “A common refrain is, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t know a school like this existed,’” Rose told us. As Liberty Common’s Casey Churchill notes, refugee teachers often have deep community roots, making them more likely to stay long-term. The challenge, however, is that they often arrive with ingrained pedagogical habits—like project-based learning and constructivist assumptions—that must be unlearned.
- Career switchers. Mid-career professionals, often entering through alternative certification programs, bring both maturity and subject knowledge. Their experience and intellectual seriousness align well with classical schools’ mission, and for a movement skeptical of ed schools, these pathways provide a welcome stream of new talent.
Faced with a limited talent pool, thoughtful leaders are also building their own informal pipelines. Valor Education’s recruiters identify college professors who “lead the souls of their students toward the truth [and] toward beauty,” the network’s president and CEO David Williams told us. They scour institutes like the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame. “We just hired a great young lady from that institute this past year,” Williams said. “She’s doing a great job teaching, and then we’ll look to hire her friends.”
Other schools are exploring residency-style apprenticeships. The Brilla Schools Network’s Seton Teaching Fellowship, akin to Teach For America in the classical space, trains about 60 teachers each year in New York, Cincinnati, and Texas. Classical Charter Schools in the Bronx offers a fellowship called ClassiCorps, a three-year program in which fellows teach during the day and earn a master of arts (MA) in teaching at night. Approximately 90 percent of their teachers come from this fellowship program.
Schools are also realizing that they must take formation seriously—not only for students but also for teachers. Refugee educators in particular need support to shed old habits and embrace a teacher-led, content-rich model. New liberal arts graduates often require guidance in classroom management and the practicalities of daily teaching. Before the first day of school, new hires at Great Hearts spend several weeks in new faculty orientation, where they receive training in the network’s curriculum and pedagogy and participate in seminars on classic texts. Several other schools described similar approaches.
Finally, classical schools are starting to collaborate with external organizations on teacher preparation efforts. Several colleges and universities, including University of Dallas, Hillsdale, and the Templeton Honors College, have launched master’s programs in classical teaching. A classical school can send one or two outstanding teachers to these programs each year to prepare them for leadership when they return to their school community. Classical U offers an online library of video courses that schools can use for professional development, and there are plans to establish an undergraduate certificate in classical teaching at Florida State University in the next few years. These efforts are fragmented, but they represent the beginnings of a deliberate infrastructure to build and sustain the sector’s growth.
The classical education movement has momentum. Parents are eager, enrollments are rising, and new schools are opening each year. But without a robust teacher pipeline, growth will slow—or worse, schools will compromise on the very characteristics that drive families to them in the first place.
The challenge is clear: Classical education must do for teachers what it has already done for students—form them in knowledge, skill, and character. The movement’s future will depend not just on curriculum and culture, but also on whether it can cultivate enough adults prepared to lead the next generation into the great conversation of Western civilization.
