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Informality and Heterarchy in American Progressive Education: The Peachtown Model

Contemporary academic scholarship has devoted a tremendous amount of effort to documenting the prevalent standardized, formal schooling environment. Too little has been written about the persistence of small, independent progressive schools that have never stopped putting their students’ individual needs and interests first. Peachtown Elementary School in Aurora, New York, is one such school. This piece details the history, philosophy, and practices of Peachtown, focusing on the words of its founder, teachers, and students to tell the story of a school, in many ways, more like a family. It focuses on the use of informality and heterarchy in creating an educational model that, for decades, has resisted the culture of testing in this “Age of Data.” Existing on a financial shoestring, Peachtown’s work deserves to be recognized for what it represents in the educational landscape and how its survival demonstrates the continuance of important underrepresented strands of tradition in American educational culture.