National Heritage Academies founder J.C. Huizenga inducted into Charter Schools Hall of Fame

By Buddy Moorehouse

For educators and advocates involved in the charter school world, the highest honor they can receive is induction into the Charter Schools Hall of Fame.

It’s an extremely prestigious honor and a very exclusive club as only a handful of people are inducted each year (only four made it in 2025).

Among the four people inducted this year was Michigan’s J.C. Huizenga, founder and Chairman of National Heritage Academies (NHA), one of the highest-performing charter school management organizations in the country.

Huizenga and the other 2025 Charter Schools Hall of Fame inductees were honored and presented with a plaque at the National Charter Schools Conference in Orlando earlier this month.

“This is a well-deserved and overdue recognition," said MAPSA President Dan Quisenberry, who was one of the people who nominated Huizenga for the honor. "Thirty years in, no single figure has been more influential, more visionary and more impactful on the charter landscape in Michigan, in varying other states and nationally, than J.C. Huizenga.”

Huizenga is only the second person from Michigan to be inducted into the Charter Schools Hall of Fame. The other is Jim Goenner, an early pioneer in the charter school movement who was the first president of MAPSA and later served as the director of the charter schools office at Central Michigan University. Goenner is currently the President and CEO of the National Charter Schools Institute in Mt. Pleasant.

Huizenga shared the credit as he was inducted into the Charter Schools Hall of Fame.

“Throughout the years, many charter school advocates have walked with me to bring high-quality school choice to families,” he said said. “Our mission at National Heritage Academies is to transform lives, and we are celebrating 30 years of impacting students and communities.”  

Huizenga’s Hall of Fame honor indeed comes as NHA celebrates its 30^th anniversary. He founded the organization in 1995 (one year after the first charter schools opened in Michigan) and it’s grown to serve 60,000 students in more than 100 schools – most of them in Michigan.

Under Huizenga’s visionary leadership, NHA has become a national model for character education and high-performing academics. Only five Michigan charter schools have ever been named National Blue Ribbon Schools by the U.S. Department of Education; all five are NHA charter schools.

Among the other accomplishments NHA has seen under Huizenga’s leadership:

• After studying NHA schools for nine years, a research study by the University of Michigan showed that students in NHA charter schools performed significantly better than students in neighboring traditional public schools, particularly in math.
• A separate study from Stanford University showed that students in NHA charter schools gain an additional 69 days of learning a year in math and 48 days of learning in reading, compared to similar students in traditional public schools.
• In the latest S. News and World Report rankings, 12 of the top 50 middle schools in Michigan were charter schools managed by NHA.
• The most recent M-STEP scores showed that one NHA charter school in Detroit – Pembroke Academy – scored nearly 60 percentage points higher than the traditional public schools in Detroit. Pembroke Academy was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2024.

Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, praised Huizenga and the other Hall of Fame inductees.

“These four school leaders serve as inspiration for all of us who believe in the infinite power of public education and public charter schools,” Coleman said. “Every day, these transformative leaders show us what’s possible in public education through flexible, innovative approaches that meet student needs, open doors to opportunity, and change lives.”