 Located between the city's Midtown and School Section neighborhoods, Walden is smaller than most Racine schools, with 292 high school and 246 middle school students as of 2016, and "emphasizes increased freedom based on responsibility and accountability".The school was founded in 1972 by Jackson Parker and David Johnston, two teachers at Racine's Park High School and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.As part of their doctoral dissertation project, they intended to develop a paradigm for evaluating alternative secondary schools, and study the effectiveness of curriculum choices.