Elizabeth C. Ely, a veteran teacher who founded the innovative Field School, a private high school in Washington that emphasizes a personalized approach to education, died Aug. 24 of colon cancer at her home in Round Hill. She was 85.

With no financial backing and no promise of long-term success, Mrs. Ely opened the Field School in 1972 above a dry-cleaning business near Dupont Circle. Forty-four students were enrolled in the school, which offered a rigorous academic curriculum with a great deal of personal attention.

At first, the school was seen as offbeat and somewhat radical. There was no dress code, and students called teachers by their first names. Classes were small, averaging 11 or 12 students, and subjects were taught in a progressive, historically linked manner with a focus on discussion.

"We take time to talk to individual students," Mrs. Ely told The Washington Post in 1977. "We try to help them assume responsibilities for their studies and for their own lives. Sometimes we scream at them. We badger. We cajole. We try to give them interesting work."

Mrs. Ely, who had been a founder of Washington's private Edmund Burke School in the 1960s, derived the name Field School from what she called "fields of knowledge," or seemingly different spheres of learning linked in a series of interconnected courses.

Students might simultaneously study, for example, Civil War history, the poetry of Walt Whitman, impressionist art and the works of Charles Darwin to gain a broad view of 19th-century life and thought. Students were required to play on an athletic team and take at least one daily course in the arts.

"Elizabeth just plowed on in the belief that such a sane curriculum would draw students," said Allie Hardwick, who was an art history teacher and administrator at the school for 17 years. "Let me tell you, she's one of the most amazing educators you're ever going to run across in your life."

Two years after the school opened, it had 97 students from grades 7 through 12 and had outgrown its cramped quarters. One Saturday in 1974, students, teachers and parents carried chairs, boxes and books up Connecticut Avenue en masse, moving the school to an old mansion on Wyoming Avenue NW, where it remained for 30 years. Mrs. Ely scrounged couches and lamps from the alley behind the building. The school had no playing fields, forcing the cross-country team to practice in Rock Creek Park and the baseball team to play on a diamond near the Washington Monument.

In 2002, the school moved to a new location on Foxhall Road and for the first time had its own athletic facilities. Mrs. Ely retired as school director in 2004, when almost 300 students were enrolled.

The Field School wasn't for everyone, she said, but it inspired fierce loyalty among those who appreciated her methods.

"It was the most intellectually stimulating school I ever went to, and I went to a lot," said Meg Kelly Rizzoli, a 1978 graduate who later sent her daughter to the school. "She created this place where it was so safe to take intellectual risks."

Elizabeth Cury was born Jan. 5, 1924, in the southwestern Virginia town of Norton, where her father operated a dry goods store. One of 10 children born to Syrian immigrants, she grew up speaking Arabic at home and was fluent in French at an early age.

She graduated from Duke University in 1951. She taught mathematics in public schools in Virginia, West Virginia and Florida and spent several years in the 1950s as a tutor in France and Switzerland.

Her marriage to Hugh Ely ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter, Sharaine Ely of Washington, who taught at the Field School for five years; a sister; two grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

After coming to Washington in 1959, Elizabeth Ely worked at the Kingsbury school, an innovative private school for people with learning disabilities. She later taught at the Hawthorne School, a progressive private school, then in 1968 helped found the Edmund Burke School, a college-prep school.

At the Field School, Mrs. Ely had an unorthodox way of hiring teachers and admitting students. She eschewed graduates with traditional education training in favor of teachers passionately devoted to their subjects. All faculty members were required to coach athletic teams and lead school clubs.

In admission interviews, Mrs. Ely wouldn't try to steer prospective students toward particular classes. Instead, she would ask what they would do if they suddenly had a million dollars. Or, she would ask, if they didn't have to go to school and had to find an internship, what would they do?

"She had a remarkable intuitive sense with people, especially students," said Clay Kaufman, who taught math and history at the school for 22 years. "It is hard to underestimate the extraordinary effect Elizabeth had on students."