The school's positive results helped shape the philosophy of New Standards, a school reform project run by the Washington-based National Center on Education and the Economy. Alice Carlson piloted performance standards for New Standards soon after opening, and the school's teachers have written curricula for New Standards. The school identifies itself as implementing the New Standards philosophy. The school's focus on applied learning brings with it some other unusual features. Teachers don't give out grades, for example, but instead work with students to develop portfolios that show their progress and serve as a basis for parent-teacher conferences.
Children call their teachers and the principal by their first names.
While that audience is often other classes of students within the school, it is also sometimes members of the community, especially in the case of long-term projects. Rather than simply putting their classwork in their backpacks and taking it home, they see their work actually used by other people, she said, adding that having an outside audience also helps students see the need for revising and editing. One project at Alice Carlson that involved a particularly meaningful interaction between children and a real audience was one conducted last year by 3rd graders in Lori Bolling's class that traced the school's history. Students got in touch with and interviewed adults who had gone to school in the 1920s through the 1980s in the same building that now houses Alice Carlson. Then they wrote and sold a short book about their research, planned an alumni event, and helped hang an exhibit that still stands in the school's hallway.