The front office also reinforces familiar hierarchy: principal at the top, teachers in the middle, kids on the bottom, sitting with hands folded at their desks.

Now, imagine a school where the organizational structure is completely flat. At the New Country School in Henderson, Minn., there is no front office. Visitors are immediately embraced by an airy atrium that is the centerpiece of this one-room schoolhouse.

And all around the room, New Country's 124 students sit at desks — real office desks — working at their own personal computers.

The feeling is comfortable. There is a hum of constant conversation, none of the screaming and yelling heard in a traditional school. Kids are free to move about the school, so there's no need for hall passes or for teachers to patrol the hall. And there's no need to send kids to the office.

New Country, a charter school, is the biggest institution in the small town of Henderson (pop. 910), about an hour southwest of Minneapolis. It's not the kind of place you expect to see radical experiments.

Read it all at npr.org