When Mr. Metcalf's seventh-graders at Chandler Preparatory Academy drift off task, he calls out, “Students, what are we here to do?” They answer: “We are here to learn to love what is beautiful.”
A drilled call-and-response is a common technique at charter schools, but this one is unique to Great Hearts Academies, America's seventh-largest charter school network, with 30 classical schools in two states—Arizona and Texas—serving 18,000 students.
Founded and headquartered in Phoenix, Great Hearts has received less national attention than counterparts such as the Knowledge Is Power Prep (KIPP) schools and Success Academies, largely because it doesn't share their mission of closing the achievement gap. Its north star is not social justice but human virtue. The hallways of its elementary schools are not lined with pennants from flagship universities and colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton but with paintings by artists whom even students at those prestigious universities may graduate without encountering, such as Vermeer, Botticelli, and Titian.
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