From the June 9, 2005 Issue of The Cape Cod Times
(Letter to Editor)

Charter school never had entrance criteria

As founding teachers of the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, we were surprised at the focus of your June 5 article.

As a public school, we have never maintained entrance criteria designed to skim students ''off the top.'' The founding board of trustees proposed just such criteria in 1994, and the four founding teachers objected strongly, threatening to pull our support if such criteria were employed. In an early test of the concept of a ''teacher-run school,'' the board agreed no entrance criteria would be used.

The notion that the school was intended to serve only the gifted and talented may stem from the fact that those willing to take the risk of enrolling in an ''experimental'' school included students looking for more from their education. This included many students fighting for their academic lives in the more traditional settings.

The same successful educational principles that served us so well in the early years continue to drive our success today: focuses on teaching beyond the curriculum frameworks through a challenging comprehensive program that revolves around active, interdisciplinary, experiential learning; on teaching to the whole child; on active environmental education and service learning; and on a creative, family-friendly, ethical community of excited learners.

Paul Niles, John Stewart, Barbara Haines and Joan Barnatt
Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School