This is not just another story about home schooling. The Noah Webster Academy is the boldest attempt to use public money – up to $5,500 per student – to support what critics call private, and sometimes religious, education. It is part of the charter-school movement, which 11 states have already written into law. While the rules vary from place to place, the basic idea is the same: public-school districts give “charters” to groups of reformers or educators who want to run experimental schools. The state aid then follows the pupils into their charter academies. In Michigan, Noah Webster must survive a round of court challenges before the money begins to flow. “This is the school without walls that educators have been predicting for some time,” says David Kallman, a Lansing lawyer and founder of Noah Webster.
Kallman and a team of 13 supervising, licensed teachers run Noah Webster out of a log cabin in the rural community of Ionia. About 2,000 children have already signed up. Most students in kindergarten through grade 8 will use a curriculum developed by the private Calvert School in Baltimore, which has a highly respected, 12,000-student correspondence program. And most older children will use the University of Nebraska’s home-school curriculum for high-school students. But parents can also choose their own lessons, provided Noah Webster approves the substitute. And there – at least in part – lies the controversy. Mary Anne Koutsouvilis, for instance, is using a Christian-oriented textbook called “Konos” to teach character based on Biblical stories and sections with titles such as “God’s Trustworthiness.” Kallman, who is active in the home-schooling movement, concedes that he made presentations at a Christian homeschooling conference and to small groups that invited him over the summer. Critics claim that he promised the parents they could teach creationism in science courses. Kallman insists that the school is not teaching creationism but that if parents choose to, that’s their right. About 920 of Noah Webster’s students were home schoolers last year, including 80 Muslim children, 30 Jews and a number of Roman Catholics and Protestants of all denominations.
The Michigan ACLU has joined in a lawsuit to block public funding and have the state’s charter law declared invalid. While classes have begun, the first state-aid checks aren’t due until next month. “The choice to educate children at home does not create the right to have that education funded by the public,” says Howard Simon, director of the Michigan ACLU. According to the state superintendent of public instruction, Robert E. Schiller, the crucial issue is that Michigan requires all teachers of public-school students to receive certification.
If Kallman gets the state aid, he says that his first purchase will be a computer network to connect each home to headquarters. With nearly $11 million of per-pupil state aid due to Noah Webster each year, there will be an inevitable surplus. He has promised the first cut of the state aid to the local school district that chartered Noah Webster. One of the state’s smallest and most financially strapped districts, the 20-student Berlin Orange Fractional School No. 3 will receive 1 percent of the state aid earmarked for Noah Webster as an administrative fee. Critics call this fee a kickback in return for granting the controversial charter. For Kallman, it’s just a necessary tithe, the price of bringing home a creative education. If Noah Webster survives the legal challenges, it’s sure to be imitated by home schoolers from coast to coast.
