Teacher Education Without the Education Establishment

In 2012, Dr. Daniel Coupland, professor of Education at Hillsdale College, published a Martin Center (then the Pope Center) article entitled “A College Reinvents Teacher Education.” That piece described how Hillsdale’s Education Department resisted the state of Michigan’s mandate that all teacher certification programs in the state be nationally accredited. 

Coupland wrote that following the decision to move away from state certification, Hillsdale’s faculty “began to think about what teacher education could be without the ideological straitjacket (i.e., ‘standards’) from the state.”

A glance at the standards listed on the website of CAEP (the largest national accreditation agency for education programs) shows why that was a sound move. Of its seven standards required for “initial” accreditation, only one is devoted to “content and pedagogical knowledge.” And rather than focusing on actual topics teachers need to know, it involves “facilitat[ing] candidates’ reflection of their personal biases to increase their understanding and practice of equity, diversity, and inclusion.” 

In sum, adherence to the “diversity” agenda is all that matters.

CAEP’s other standards require programs to overcome elaborate bureaucratic obstacles that do little to help teachers to become stewards of knowledge and effective leaders of the young. 

Hillsdale faculty and administration quickly recognized that this push for national teacher education accreditation represented not only a significant added financial strain for smaller institutions such as Hillsdale, but also a threat to teacher preparation programs that want to follow their institution’s mission and the principles of the liberal arts tradition.

Dr. David Whalen, a professor of English at the college and provost during the period described above, observes that Hillsdale’s transition away from state certification was “like a caterpillar to a butterfly—the elements for the change were there all along. But we decided that we needed to change the way we did things so that it truly comported with our principles.” 

Indeed, Hillsdale College resists (what Whalen terms) “the bureaucracy of experts” that dominates mainstream teacher preparation. 

Even before leaving state certification behind, Hillsdale did not offer a major in education. Rather, it required future teachers to complete a rich and rigorous core curriculum and to major in an academic subject just like any other student at the college. This broad and deep formation provided by the core was not to be sidelined by an over-emphasis on education courses based on whatever fads were favored by the education establishment.

Free from the education establishment, Hillsdale’s Education Department was able to draw from the college’s mission to develop a deeper and more robust teacher education experience that was grounded in time-tested, historical principles of education. 

The department created a 19-credit-hour minor in Classical Education, which includes a core of four courses plus two electives. 

One required course is English Grammar, which prepares teachers to understand and communicate the structure of language at a deep level, enabling their students to develop clear and polished communication. A common complaint among college professors these days is that their students can scarcely write, but that won’t be a problem with Hillsdale-trained teachers. 

Another core course is Philosophy of Education, which uses classic texts to delve into perennial questions about the nature and purpose of the educational task. 

Examples of electives include Explicit Phonics Reading Instruction, which tackles the nation’s literacy crisis head-on through learning the traditional method of sounding out phonemes; and Classical Pedagogy, in which future teachers learn techniques of classroom leadership rooted in attention to the cultivation of character, respect, and thoughtfulness in students. 

Students who complete the Classical Education minor have contemplated broad, serious, and humane ideas rather than whatever is in vogue according to the education establishment. They are infused with a passion for cultivating the hearts and minds of the next generation instead of preparing young people for social activism. 

It is no wonder that schools that recognize the need for educational reform are so interested in hiring Hillsdale graduates rather than the products of accredited schools of education.

Building on the success of its undergraduate program, Hillsdale College launched the Diana Davis Spencer Graduate School of Classical Education in 2022 and welcomed its first cohort of students in the Master of Arts in Classical Education (MACE) program, a two-year, full-time, residential graduate program. In the summer of 2025, Hillsdale added a second graduate program in classical education specifically designed for practicing educators who want to serve as leaders in the growing classical education movement (Master of Classical Education Leadership, or MCEL). 

Graduates of these programs are equipped not only to teach but also to serve as school leaders, policy advisors, curriculum developers, and other important roles in the renewal of classical K-12 education.

What does this mean more generally for teacher preparation in America? Unburdened by the onerous and often unnecessary mandates of the education establishment, Hillsdale has shown that institutions of higher education can meet the needs of those who will do the noble work of educating the next generation of Americans.

Davis C. Smith is a classical Humanities teacher and a 2026 MA graduate of Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Classical Education.