Bold exercise in common grace

Education | J.C. Huizenga’s National Heritage Academies are making a difference to thousands of parents | Joel Belz

PONTIAC, Mich. — In the sharp and sometimes bitter debate between state-sponsored public schools, on the one hand, and private, Christian, parochial, and home schools on the other, there is a typically overlooked middle ground. It is the province of the charter school movement. And perhaps nobody in America has done more to stake out a claim to that territory than J.C. Huizenga, a high-tech manufacturer from Grand Rapids, Mich.

Ask Huizenga what the J.C. stands for, and he'll give you both a boyish grin and an obvious fib: "Joe Cool," he says. But John Charles Huizenga is pulling your leg, ever so briefly and ever so politely. Huizenga is very good at making friends—but those who know him best will tell you that he does it not with glad-handing glibness, but with the grit of reality. So when you start exploring the friendships this man is forming day in and day out, you find yourself marveling at both their number and their substance.