Readers know that most news these days about education is bad. What, parents ask, can we do about the education of our children? Schools like the NCCL offer one answer. It will not be the answer for everybody. Indeed, the idea that one kind of school is right for every child has helped produce the present predicament. But for a decade the NCCL has been quietly demonstrating that alternatives in education exist for parents concerned enough to try something new.

The parents who founded the NCCL knew what they wanted: a school which encouraged children's curiosity and individual interests. They wanted a neighborhood school easily reached by walking or biking. And they wanted a school open to all children without regard to race, religion or ability to pay.

Finally, in a world where everything seems to be on a larger and larger scale, the parents thought a school of 75 youngsters from kindergarten through eighth grade was about the right size. If more families were interested, they could form their own school on the same model. In the school's 10 years, the vision of its founders has not substantially changed. The school now has its own building in downtown Newark, deliberately planned for no more than 75 children.

If you have read this far, you are probably asking what all parents ask when they visit. "What happens after the eighth grade? Can your kids cut it when they go back to the real world?"

The answer is an overwhelming "yes". Graduates soon adjust to the traditional system and most excel. Students don't always like what they find "out there." The NCCL is warm, tightly knit and exuberant, rather like an extended family, and the first weeks of transition to the "real world" are sometimes discouraging.

But the record of 10 years is clear. Children from the NCCL enjoy learning, have confidence in their ability and preparation, and achieve academically and socially. Parents can confidently take their children's early education into their own hands, but there is a catch. Parents have to care enough to do the work.

Nobody who was in on the founding of the NCCL will remember it as an easy time. An abandoned fraternity house in downtown Newark was available. The site was right and so was the rent. But the brothers' revelry had left the interior a shambles. Somebody was needed to channel neighborhood interest and energy.

As is so often the case in such enterprises, one person made the difference - Ann Brown. The young mother of two pre-school children, she had helped start a storefront school in New York City. Having moved to Newark, she still wanted her own school. Ann Brown organized parents in the neighborhood, recruited the first teachers, signed up students and, when the rent fell due, loaned her own money. So the school, smelling of paint and Lysol, opened in September, 1971 with eight teachers and 50 students.

Ann Brown believed the direction of the school should be lodged in a parents' cooperative. She knew the parents' talents would be the school's hidden resource. And so it proved. One father, an accountant, did the books and taxes. Another, an electrician, installed required illuminated EXIT signs. A carpenter built lockers. Secretaries typed letters. Parents still do all maintenance and bookkeeping.

Five mothers became the first teachers. Two young men trained in engineering and in anthropology but dissatisfied with their choices first worked as volunteers, later were hired as full-time teachers. Such is the appeal of the school that, after 10 years, the original faculty is intact.

The neighborhood, the school discovered, was filled with people with special talents generously willing to share them with children. French, photography, geology and swimming were added to the curriculum by people who could find and hour here and there to teach them. A doctor and lawyer were persuaded to give short courses. The list gets longer every year. Critics complain of the school's lack of structure, but without its openness and flexibility much would be lost.

For that matter, critics complain of lots of things, notably a coolness of the part of the faculty towards grade levels, standardized tests, lesson plans and all the trappings of mass education. What, people want to know, is the NCCL philosophy? In the early days the parents argued a good deal more about educational theory than they do now. The reason is plain to see. At the beginning the school was frankly an experiment. There was only one question. Would it work? With experience and success has come confidence. Where there is one teacher for every nine youngsters, no child is lost. And a highly structured curriculum, the parents and teachers believe, is no substitute for patience, interest, and understanding.

The school makes errors. In a cooperative, for example, parents clean the toilets, wash windows, and scrub the peanut butter out of the lockers. At first, parents would escape this drudgery by paying a supplement. But when the school sensed division developing, the parents voted that everyone should help clean. Monthly meetings can turn acrimonious, but all is reconciled in such annual fund raisers as the fall wine tasting and spring fair.

Fund raising never ends, a chore as inevitable and unpleasant as the public schools' scramble for taxes. The parents understand the relationship of quality to cost, and tuition over the years has grown from $500 to $1,600. Nobody likes it, and a scholarship plan makes certain that no child from the neighborhood is turned away for lack of money. Fortunately, the school has not lacked for friends. One supporter, the Crystal Trust in Wilmington helped with a generous grant at a crucial moment.

The following experience, or something like it, has happened so often that the teachers consider it typical. This month 40 students were in Washington to see the "Search for Alexander" exhibit at the National Gallery. After they had taken places in the auditorium and were waiting for the lights to go down, an elderly gentleman introduced himself as a pediatrician from Alabama and asked if the children were from a school. Told briefly about the NCCL , he said, "They don't seem like the usual children on a school trip. They're so curious and attentive and happy. What a wonderful school spirit!"

One seldom hears of "school spirit" these days, but the NCCL likes to think its spirit is its most proud resource.

The parents who founded the NCCL never set out to "challenge the system." Their goal was not to lead a revolution but to provide a setting where their children would enjoy learning. And while they differ on many matters, the parents agree on the chief lesson to be learned from starting and running a school - it's an education.