It’s 1 p.m. on a sunny afternoon at Manhattan Free School and only half the 22 students are present, reading, playing video games, talking with friends or idling away time on the couch. The rest have gone downstairs to enjoy the beginning of spring in New York City.

This is a typical day at the Manhattan Free School, which rents out three rooms from St. George’s School in the East Village. Based on the premise that students learn best when then are self-directed, Manhattan Free School, a private school in its first year, has no required classes, no grades, no tests and no homework. The students aren’t even formally assigned to specific grade levels.

Manhattan Free School is one of four such experimental schools opened up recently in the New York region. Another is expected to open in Queens next year. These new “unschools” are part of a growing backlash against the escalating national focus on standardized tests and rigid curricula that goes along with them.

In addition to the Albany Free School and the Brooklyn Free School, three more free schools — the The Teddy McArdle Free School that opened in New Jersey in 2007, Jersey Shore Free School that started in 2008 and The Manhattan Free School — have opened up in the past two years. All believe “students must be free to develop naturally as human beings in a non-coercive educational environment.”

While hundreds of free schools existed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the movement stalled in the last couple of decades, said Jerry Mintz, director of Alternative Education Reform Organization.

Today it is unknown how many free schools operate in the United States because it is hard to classify them under one umbrella, said Mintz. While the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, the first free school in America, today lists 27 on its website, the International Democratic Education Network states there are over 200 places that offer democratic education in over 30 countries.

Based on a model first developed at Summerhill, an independent British boarding school in England in the 1920s, and later in the United States at Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts in 1968, these free schools believe that children should control their own education. Everyone has an equal vote in how the school should function. Democratic meetings set up the agenda for the week.

If a student wants to learn something, they can request a class. Anyone can attend these classes from the youngest student, who is 5, to the oldest students, who are typically 17. If no one is knowledgeable on the subject, students at Manhattan Free School, for instance, are often referred to instructions on the Internet.

Often classes are held by students themselves. Twelve-year-old Max, who came to Manhattan Free School from Manhattan New School because his mother was interested in the movement, just finished teaching a class on Cosmology to a group of older students. A fan of the theories behind the origins of the universe, Max read up extensively on the subject for the lecture. If students are interested, he will start holding regular classes in the upcoming weeks.

Other classes at Manhattan Free School range from Portuguese, mythology, nutrition to nature centers and Papier-mâché. Courses are taught by either the two-member permanent staff, parent volunteers or the students themselves.

Ten-year-old Priscilla Delmoral moved to Manhattan Free School from the East Village Community School after her mother noticed that her usually upbeat child was reticent and uninvolved at school.

“She (Priscilla) was also labeled with all kinds of behavioral problems at her old school,” said her mother. “She was quiet at her old school. Now she is in her element,” said Ms. Delmoral who teaches at New York University and Hunter College.

Delmoral said she isn’t learning as much as she did in her old school. “I am lazy,” she said, mentioning that most of her day is spent playing on the computer.

Pat Werner, the founder of Manhattan Free School, points out, however, that once Priscilla gets bored of doing nothing, she will seek things out on her own.

“Kids who have spent their entire lives within a regimented curriculum are rebelling against the system when they first get here,” she said. “Sometimes it takes them months to make the first initiative to learn.”

There’s only one graduation requirement — students have to write and present a thesis about why they are ready to leave school. To give graduating seniors an opportunity to attend state colleges, the Brooklyn Free School, for instance, has even started offering the New York based mandatory Regents exam.

While there is no direct measure to study the successes of the free schools, “The Pursuit of Happiness: The Lives of Sudbury Valley Alumni,”a book written by Dan Greenberg and the other founders at Sudbury Valley, claims 84 percent of their graduates attend college. Typically, students enter creative fields, work in health care or business. Over 42 percent of Sudbury graduates become entrepreneurs.

When asked if kids need to learn any of the basics, Werner, a former public school teacher, said there is no evidence that it is important for a 10-year-old to learn formalized algebra or chemistry.

“We make children memorize formulas or paragraphs from historical books,” Werner said. “But this goes in one ear and out the other. Kids forget.”

About one quarter of the kids at both the Brooklyn Free School and Manhattan Free School come from a home schooling background. Students like 16-year-old Joseph McFarland, a home schooler at Manhattan Free School, said this kind of flexibility is advantageous. “We’re used to learning without a structure so we have an easier time motivating ourselves.”

While it’s too early to tell the retention rate at the Manhattan Free School, the five-year-old Brooklyn Free School has over a 90 percent retention rate of its students. The 47-student school also has a waiting list of over 60 kids, reflecting an increasing interest in free schools. 

Most of the free school students tend to be from middle to upper income families and pay tuition on a sliding scale from $1,500 to $15,000 depending on income at the Manhattan Free School and $10, 000 at Brooklyn Free School. The school is currently making ends meet on tuition money alone, said Werner, but it plans to apply for grants next year.

The fate of this educational movement remains up in the air. Critics on both sides have leveled vehement arguments for and against free schools, but for now, Werner is happy to fight her battles for school freedom.