EDUCATION: A Class of Their Own

Ron Helmer's two-car garage isn't much to look at, but the modest structure set amid the cornfields and ranch homes of exurban Freeland, Michigan, harbors a revolution. Inside the garage and spilling over into what was Helmer's living room is the Northlane Math and Science Academy, a new kind of public school. In these unconventional quarters, Helmer, a veteran teacher and school administrator, and two other teachers are attempting to guide 39 students, ages 6 to 12, toward a better understanding of their world via a very active brand of learning.

On a recent day, the youngest children gathered around the small pond in Helmer's backyard, collecting water samples and aquatic plants for study. In the former living room, an older group struggled with the intricacies of urban planning -- where to put the power plants, whether to build a highway, how big to make the municipal hospital -- by playing a complex computer game called SimCity 2000 on the school's five new Macintoshes. Members of a third group could be found in the garage, sanding and sawing to create kid-size furniture of their own design.

Like other Michigan public schools, Northlane Academy gets its funding -- a total of $175,500 -- from the state lottery and sales taxes. But because the school belongs to a new category of independent "charter schools" -- one of nine that have opened in Michigan this fall -- Helmer, as principal, is free to spend the money as he sees fit -- on those Macs, for example -- without interference or oversight from the local board of education. He is also free to depart from the public-school curriculum, which he regards as about a mile long and an inch deep. Northlane, he vows, will teach kids to think and understand rather than learning by rote. "Here we're not so concerned with being able to name the three capitals of South Africa as we are with why South Africa has three capitals; with understanding the cultural, economic and political forces that created those capitals."

It's an approach that so far seems to be going over well with Northlane's young scholars. Sidney Tessin, 10, excitedly tells how her class dissected walnuts and discussed the ways vascular and nonvascular plants differ. In her old public school "we talked about plants," she says, "but never about why there are vascular and nonvascular plants." Nick Reisinger, a freckled 12- year-old, chimes in: "Here we get to talk about things instead of just listening to some boring teacher. I don't feel like 'Duh, what am I doing here?' anymore."

THE CHARTER-SCHOOL MOVEMENT IS NOT yet big. Just 11 states, beginning with Minnesota in 1991, have passed laws permitting the creation of autonomous public schools like Northlane; a dozen more have similar laws in the works. Most states have restricted the number of these schools (100 in California, 25 in Massachusetts) in an attempt to appease teachers' unions and other opponents. Nevertheless, the charter movement is being heralded as the latest and best hope for a public-education system that has failed to deliver for too many children and cannot compete internationally.