Here's a place where language isn't a barrier

Maddie Maguire, a 10-year-old girl from West Newbury, has difficulty assigning sounds to letters of the alphabet.

Her classmate, Lucia Ansara of Essex, also 10, has dyslexia and a language-processing disorder that makes it difficult to complete classroom assignments, a problem that is often compounded by her shaky short-term memory.

Both girls are adopting new strategies to overcome their learning obstacles in Kriisten Nicolosi's classroom at the Landmark School in Beverly, the only educational institution of its kind in Boston's northern suburbs.

While other schools in the area -- such as the Harbor Schools in Amesbury and Merrimac -- educate children with severe emotional or behavioral problems, Landmark is for emotionally stable students of at least average intelligence who have language-based learning disabilities.

The school opened its doors in 1971 with just 40 students at a small campus in Prides Crossing. Over the years, it has expanded its original campus and grown to include a second campus in nearby Manchester-by-the-Sea, and today serves more than 400 former public school and private students from five countries. This fall, for the first time in Landmark's history, there is a waiting list of children seeking admission to its elementary program.

''We've always accepted 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds, but they followed a middle school model," said Kathie Babcock, founder and director of the elementary program at Landmark. ''We founded the elementary program in 1994, with just nine students, in response to demand. We were finding that more and more families were interested in getting their children help at a younger age."

Much of that demand was spawned by a nationwide education reform movement, which was embraced by Massachusetts in 1993. Since then, there has been a push to identify children with learning disabilities at a much younger age.

As a growing number of children were diagnosed with learning disabilities throughout the 1990s, the stigma of having a child with special needs all but disappeared, prompting many parents to seek out specialized schools, like Landmark. In the last year alone, the number of children enrolled in the school's elementary program has doubled, to 43; 12 children are on the waiting list.

''One of the things that Landmark does and does well is create opportunities for students with language-based learning disabilities to be successful," said Janice A. Magno, an assistant professor of education at Salem State College whose career in the field of special education spans more than 30 years.

Many of the students at Landmark are referred to the school by a neuropsychologist or their local school district. Others hear about Landmark through the grapevine, from their peers, or the parents of their child's classmates.

According to Robert Broudo, headmaster at Landmark, students with language-based learning disabilities often are very bright. For many of them, the most challenging task they face is to learn to trust their intelligence -- Broudo noted most of the children at Landmark have experienced repeated failures in mainstream schools. Maddie Maguire and other Landmark students described feeling frustrated in other classroom settings, wondering why they couldn't keep up with the other children in their class.

''When I was in the third grade, I was reading at a first-grade level," said Maddie, a fifth-grade student who started her second year at Landmark last week. ''Now, I'm reading at grade level. I've also improved in spelling and math. I'm studying division now."

A vivacious girl, Maddie ''is like the mayor there; she's very social," said Gretchen Maguire, Maddie's mother. ''Her issue, starting in first grade, was reading. She had a very difficult time with it, but she would always catch up with her classmates by November. Until the third grade, her memory compensated for the trouble she was having decoding the words."

At Landmark, a highly structured environment helped Maddie analyze how to attack words and cope with the delay and complications she has processing language and assigning sounds to letters.

''We break down multiple syllable words into single syllables, with a focus on prefixes and suffixes," explained Eliza Strawbridge, Maddie's tutor. ''The word subtraction becomes sub-trac-tion. The process has helped her develop her reading skills. The ultimate goal is to give Maddie the foundation she needs to go to any school and be successful."

According to Maguire and other parents, Landmark's holistic approach to education -- which includes classes of no more than seven students, a ratio of teachers to students of 1 to 3, an emphasis on character development, and daily one-on-one tutoring sessions -- adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

''Lucia has always loved to learn, but in her previous school, she was anxious, nervous, and insecure," said Karen Ansara, Lucia's mother. ''From day one at Landmark, she couldn't wait to go to school the next day. She couldn't wait for summer vacation to be over. She feels secure and successful because she can see her progress. She loves school now."

Lucia has complex language problems but can now answer the telephone, understand what someone is saying to her, and write a message -- tasks that she could not master when she started attending Landmark three years ago, her mother said.

Founded by Charles ''Chad" Drake to educate children with dyslexia, a reading disability that affects up to 12 percent of Americans, Landmark's mission is to empower children who have trouble processing language to realize their full potential so that they may thrive academically and socially. For most, the aim is to return to mainstream classrooms.

Today, Landmark is recognized as an international leader in the field of learning disabilities. The school offers elementary, middle, and high school programs for students 7 to 20. Outreach and diagnostic services also are available. Tuition for a day-school student is $34,000 a year; high school students who choose to live on campus pay $43,900. Approximately 50 percent of students receive some form of financial assistance from their home school districts.

''We have a herculean task in the public education system, to meet the needs of children with vast needs and from various backgrounds," Magno said.

''We have the knowledge and the skills that we need to do what we need to do; the fact is, we don't have the will to do it," Magno said. ''Until that changes, there will always be a need for schools like Landmark to serve a population of children who are not being well served by the public education system."

For further information, visit www.landmarkschool.org Brenda J. Buote may be reached at bbuote@globe.com