Free Rein

At 'free' schools, children choose what they want to learn and when they want to learn it.

By Michelle Galley

Upper Marlboro, Md.

Imagine a school with no classrooms or desks. No textbooks or required reading. No tests. No academic standards. No benchmarks. No principal.

Now picture that same school housed in a large wooden lodge nestled on more than 12 acres of land surrounded by forest. It has fewer than 100 students, ranging in age from 5 to 19, all doing whatever they want, when they want.

That is the Fairhaven School, located in a still-bucolic area near Washington, which operates in a way that would baffle many educators, much less the public. Known as a "free school," Fairhaven has offered students a radical alternative to the demands of traditional education since it...