Overview
Turning Point Education (TPE) and the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) have extended their influence across the country. Approximately 70 percent of the schools recommended by TPE are also listed in ACCS’s online directory.
ACCS was co-founded by Christian nationalist Doug Wilson who estimates that the United States can become a Christian nation in 250 years by “preaching the gospel, planting churches, [and] starting classical Christian schools.” The founder of Turning Point USA and TPE, Charlie Kirk, claimed to be an admirer of Wilson.
TPE and ACCS intend to train educators to teach a classical Christian education curriculum to 1.5 million students within the next decade. David Goodwin, the head of ACCS, has coined this movement as The Battle for the American School. Goodwin believes that 1.5 million students or 20 percent of the American student population will be enough to “win a war.”
The Relationship Between Turning Point USA and ACCS
Turning Point USA (TPUSA), one of the most prominent conservative nonprofit organizations in the United States, is promoting a network of Christian nationalist schools to parents across the country.
TPUSA’s education partner is the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), which was cofounded by Douglas Wilson. Wilson is a self-described Christian nationalist and “paleo-Confederate” who seeks to replace the American constitutional order with a Christian theocracy.
TPUSA’s education arm and ACCS have stated that their goal is to place 1.5 million children at classical Christian schools within the next decade. They plan to train teachers, mobilize families and build infrastructure as part of an initiative they call “The Battle for the American School.” Their goals are long-term: Wilson estimates that the United States can become a Christian nation in 250 years by “‘preaching the gospel, planting churches, [and] starting classical Christian schools.’”
If Battle for the American School’s overarching initiative succeeds, 20 percent of American students will be educated in one of their schools in the coming years. ACCS’s leaders believe these students would transform American society. “How do you win a war with 20 percent?” David Goodwin, the president of ACCS has asked rhetorically. “If we can get just 20 percent of them, it’ll be more like having 60 percent of the leaders in this country.”
David Goodwin at the Turning Point Educators’ Summit explains how 20 percent of American students at a classical Christian school is enough to “win a war.” Sept. 3, 2026
Since Charlie Kirk established TPUSA in 2012, its clubs and faith groups have expanded their reach across the country, including through the organization’s education arm, Turning Point Education (TPE). TPE was founded in 2022 with a mission “dedicated to reclaiming the education of our children, reviving virtuous education focused on truth, goodness, and beauty, and restoring God as the foundation of education.” As of 2026, TPE claims it has grown to “over 350 affiliate schools” that can be found in almost every state in the country.
TPE’s rapid growth can be at least partially attributed to its relationship with ACCS.
Turning Point Education’s Institutional Overlap with ACCS
Civil Defense has examined TPE’s map of recommended schools and found that more than two-thirds of them are affiliated with ACCS. As of October 2026, Civil Defense identified 279 distinct schools on TPE’s map. Not all of these institutions offer full-time schooling. Dozens are co-ops or enrichment centers, or programs offering tutoring and/or homeschooling. Still, according to TPUSA’s classifications, at least 204 of these K-12 schools offer some form of in-person instruction.142 of those 204 K-12 schools are also listed in ACCS’s online directory - meaning that approximately 70 percent of the schools recommended by TPE are affiliated with the network cofounded by Wilson.
Turning Point schools also in ACCS, one dot per school
Map of schools promoted by Turning Point Education and affiliated with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS).
As reported by Civil Defense, ACCS and its accredited schools have been controversial in their own right. In our previous report on The Heritage Foundation’s promotion of ACCS schools, we catalogued publicly available accounts of abuse that took place at multiple schools. In July, The Spokesman-Review published an account in which the mother of two former students at an ACCS school described it as a “scholastic cult.”
Despite its controversies, ACCS continues to grow. ACCS’s annual revenue has increased by more than 60 percent in recent years, from $1.8 million in 2022 to over $2.9 million in 2025.
Turning Point’s “Five Pillars of 5C Schools”
TPE provides mentorship and training to teachers, students and school administrators based on what it describes as the “Five Pillars of 5C schools.” To be classified as a TPE 5C school, it must be:
Christian: “Education where all areas of study are rooted in God’s truth aimed at forming children into adults who glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
Classical: “A Christian paideia shaping the minds and affections toward truth, goodness and beauty consistent with how the great thinkers in human history were educated.”
Conservative: “Preserving the founding ideals of our nation and Western Tradition including our Christian heritage and the values of life, liberty, freedom, equality, and justice for all.”
Collaborative: “An educational partnership between parents, church and school, restoring the biblical and historical model of paideia that has formed both souls and nations.”
Cost-Affordable: “An intentional partnership-based model that facilitates a transformational education for every student, accessible to every family.”
TPE does not define the term “Christian paideia” on its website, but it is a key concept promoted by ACCS. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, “paideia” is a Greek word which refers to education or upbringing. On its own website, ACCS defines Christian paideia as “the part of upbringing and education that forms the soul of a human being,” and argues it is necessary “to shape the virtues and sharpen the reason of students so that these things are in line with God’s will.”
According to ACCS, the classical Christian education (CCE) model was developed in the Middle Ages from classical Greco-Roman thought and Christianity. Goodwin, ACCS’s president, has even stated, “My passion is to pull [education] back to what it was in the Middle Ages.” Indeed, ACCS aims to “restore a Christian paideia…by building classical schools and Christian communities, helping parents find schools, and promoting the critical importance of classical Christian education.”
TPE is evidently working to turn ACCS’s educational vision into a reality.
TPE’s map of schools lists one “Flagship 5C School”: the Classical Consortium Academy, a K-12 hybrid school in Barrington, Ill. The school has been an ACCS member since 2020.
Jennifer Burns is the founder and head of Classical Consortium Academy. She has served as the Director of Academics at Turning Point Academy, which is devoted to building 5C schools. In a 2024 interview with Marlin Detweiler of Veritas Press, Burns explained Turning Point Academy’s strategy for “seeding five C schools” across the nation. Burns said that TPA “walks people through very methodically of how to start a school” and “equip them with as much as we can from our model school so that they don’t have to recreate the wheel.” She added that would-be educators “don’t have to come up with their own handbook from scratch or do all of the things. Burns’ professional growth is only partly attributed to her work with TPE. In fact, Burns said, “20 years ago I had help from ACCS.” Detweiler is both president and founder of Veritas Press, which is devoted to promoting classical Christian education, as well as a founding board member of ACCS and served as its “initial chairman for two years.”
The Battle for the American School
Prior to his assassination, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk repeatedly praised both ACCS’s mission and Wilson himself. On Sept. 11, 2025, the day after Kirk’s death, Wilson promoted an interview he had conducted with Kirk on his podcast several months earlier. “There’s this group of us — and I include you in this pastor, and I’m a big admirer of yours — that is speaking the truth,” Kirk said to Wilson.
Charlie Kirk tells Christian nationalist Doug Wilson that he’s a big admirer of him. Sept. 11, 2025
In addition to co-founding ACCS, Wilson has also established New Saint Andrews College and the K-12 Logos School. Logos, a classical Christian school in Moscow, Idaho, is referred by other classical Christian schools as the model school for CCE. The Logos School is featured on TPE’s map of schools, as is New Saint Andrews College – the only college included on the map.
Wilson remains closely affiliated with ACCS and has opened a church in Washington, D.C. that has been attended by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In early 2026, Hegseth invited Wilson to give a sermon at the Pentagon.
David Goodwin, the current head of ACCS, has held the role since 2015. Goodwin is best known for co-authoring the 2022 book “Battle for the American Mind” with Hegseth. In it, Goodwin and Hegseth argue that the American public school system has been shaped by progressive thinkers who shifted the educational model away from traditional classical values. Hegseth and Goodwin proposed transitioning American public education back to a classical Christian education. Following the book’s release, Goodwin attempted to fend off accusations that the book promoted Christian nationalism, writing on his personal Substack: “We squarely land in the conservative camp, but we claim it was progressives who invented patriotic forms of nationalism to draw Christians off-sides.” In the same paragraph, Goodwin stated: “Was/is America a Christian nation? Most certainly.”
Following a visit to the ACCS-accredited Ambrose School in Idaho, Kirk interviewed Goodwin on his show in early 2025. “I was very impressed,” Kirk said of the school, adding that “it was so different than traditional government-run schools and even private schools that have a industrial model, very German model.” At the end of the episode, Kirk added, “I wanna see more classical schools pop up. I wanna see more classical Christian schools pop up in particular, and I’m really impressed.”
On Jan. 26, 2023, Kirk and Goodwin appeared together on an episode of Hegseth’s The MisEducation of America. In the episode, Kirk outlined his educational vision: “The church and the Christian community built the backbone of American education properly in the classical biblical model. It’s gonna take courageous churches and people that are filled with faith, filled with the spirit, to say, you know what, I’m not gonna send my kid to government schools…We’re doing this at Turning Point Academy…The churches are the only way forward.” The episode foreshadowed what was to come in the alliance between Turning Point and ACCS, which Kirk and Goodwin called the Battle for the American School.
The aforementioned goal of Battle for the American School is to “prepare” 1.5 million students in classical Christian schools within the next decade. ACCS, Turning Point Education and The Heritage Foundation, as well as other organizations, have come together to train and certify classical Christian educators themselves. As Goodwin explained during the MisEducation episode: “I know that the power of the classroom is not in the curriculum, it’s the cultural wind that blows through in the form of teachers and how they’re trained…that is the real battle that we’re facing.”
Charlie Kirk on Pete Hegseth’s The MisEducation of America explaining how Christian churches are the backbone of American education and the only way forward. Jan. 26, 2023
Goodwin’s latest book, “Forging the American Mind: A Year-by-Year Guide for Classical Christian Education,” published in June 2026, outlines the K-12 practices for teaching “how to parent and teach kids with wisdom, love, and ambition.” The book is “designed to give somebody a full orientation to classical Christian teaching,” Goodwin has explained. Hegseth wrote the foreword and stated, “that is the point of this book: Our first draft of the mission to revitalize American education and the minds that will one day lead our country.” In a brief appearance on Real America’s Voice, Goodwin discussed his book and his perspective on teaching: “I just don’t think you should trust the public schools with your kids. If you have kids, get them out of the public schools. I hope you bring them to a classical Christian school, but if you don’t, teach them at home.”
Following Kirk’s assassination, Goodwin has continued to work with TPE, including at events hosted by both organizations. For the last five years, Turning Point Education has held an Educators’ Summit, and ACCS hosts an annual Repairing the Ruins conference. Both conferences are advertised on the Battle for the American School website. Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College and TPE were two of the partners for the Repairing the Ruins conference in 2026.
TPE’s Educators’ Summit brings together “a growing number of educators across the country who are living, teaching, and leading courageously out of God-honoring convictions” over a four-day period. At the Educators’ Summit in 2026, Goodwin gave a nearly 40-minute speech on the history and evolution of classical Christian education. Benjamin Merkle, who is Doug Wilson’s son-in-law and the head of New Saint Andrews College, also spoke at the event. New Saint Andrews College and ACCS were among the TPE event’s sponsors.
Beyond TPE and ACCS’ conferences, Battle for the American school is an opportunity, as Hegseth explained in a promotional video, “for hundreds of thousands of young Americans to walk into an ACCS school and receive the kind of education that unleashed the founding wisdom of our country…and then infuse that into our families, into our churches, and into our body politic.” Later in the video, Goodwin says: “What we’re trying to do is take enough of the public school share that we can change the country’s direction with powerful leadership coming out of these classical Christian schools.” Goodwin continued: “We disciple children to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ. That’s what we do. We want to have one million free and virtuous citizens, deeply committed to Christ and equipped to transform the world around them, coming out of our classical Christian schools in the next decade.”
If Battle for the American School achieves its goal, Wilson will be 10 years closer to the Christian nation he has envisioned, with Turning Point Education and ACCS’s trained teachers at the forefront.
The next ACCS Repairing the Ruins conference is in June 2027. No date has been announced for next year’s Turning Point Educators’ Summit. But during his Educators’ Summit speech this year, Goodwin announced that he is releasing a documentary called “American Kairos” sometime in 2027. American Kairos “chronicles the lives of five or six families that have basically been thrown upon the rocks in the public school system.” The documentary reportedly served as a precursor to Goodwin’s latest book, but both of Goodwin’s projects are symbiotically building the foundation for the broader Christian nationalist education movement.
As Goodwin explained in his speech at the Turning Point Educators’ Summit earlier this year, “It’s gonna take us another century to right this, but it’s our calling. That’s what God’s asked us to do.”
Founded in 2026, the Civil Defense Institute is a nonpartisan investigative research organization. We research people, organizations and networks whose conduct undermines civil society and Americans’ freedom to participate in public life. Our work examines extremist and conspiracy-driven campaigns, foreign influence, organized harassment and the institutions that enable them.