My children attended Montessori schools, and it really is a wonderful system.
I would really like to see an extension of this learning method up through high school --- the closest thing I'm aware of was a school I attended in Mississippi for a couple of years --- classes were divided between academic and social, social classes (homeroom, phys ed, social studies, &c.) were attended at one's age, while academic classes (reading, math, science, geography, history, &c.) were by ability (with a limit on no more than 4 grades ahead up to 8th grade) --- after 8th grade that was removed and students were allowed to take any classes.
Some of the faculty were accredited as faculty at a local college, and where warranted, either professors travelled from there to the school, or students travelled to the college for classes --- it wasn't uncommon for students to graduate high school and simultaneously be awarded a college degree.
Apparently, the system was deemed unfair because it accorded a benefit to the students who were able to take advantage of it, with no commensurate compensation for those who were not, so the Miss. State Supreme Court dismantled it.
I had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one. When I put my kid in it at 3 years old, he hated it. As I looked into it more, it seems to me that it is actually very rigid, with kids being able to play with just a small set of toys that don't really exercise their creativity, and with little opportunity for group play. We switched him to a Reggio Emilia school where the kids are constantly doing group projects and art and he enjoys it a lot more. I recommend parents observe what's actually happening in classrooms and think about what's best for their kid in the early years instead of assuming "Montessori" is the best path.
It's hard to do self paced learning when there's no follow up. I got put into a self-paced learning experiment where we polished off the curriculum in three weeks and played chess the rest of the semester. There was nothing else for us to do. Nobody was ready to fill the remaining months. The whole school has to commit in that direction for that to succeed.
My biggest skepticism about Mamdani in NYC is that he wants to get rid of gifted programs. Apparently some thing it's wrong to adjust each child's learning experience to their capacity for learning. Which is... Wild.
I’ve been advocating for this for years so I’m glad to hear you had such a good experience.
At the elementary level, up until about 3rd or 4th grade it always made more sense to me to have lots of smaller “neighborhood” level Montessori schools rather than a few large schools from Kindergarten - 6th.
I can’t find any record of a Mississippi Supreme Court decision regarding a program like you described. I did find evidence that Mississippi actively permits dual enrollment for secondary and post secondary education. Do you have a source for the decision you referenced?
> while academic classes (reading, math, science, geography, history, &c.) were by ability
My issue with this is that it just is selection bias, telling you nothing about how good the method is at teaching.
Does placing by ability actually helps student learn and score better? Or it's just that those who are good and bad already get divided up, and we know not why some are good and others are worse?
There are a few K-12 Montessori schools, but not many. My wife is a primary (3-5 year olds) at the only one in our state. My kids are in 2nd and 4th grade, and we intend to see it through. They love it.
>> because it accorded a benefit to the students who were able to take advantage of it, with no commensurate compensation for those who were not
I came to comment (without reading it) that the study results are probably not universal. The programs are self selecting because kids not suited for it won't stay. This is not a critique of the program or the kids who dont fit it. Just an observation that its so "extreme" that only kids who benefit will stay.
There was a lot of experimentation with education methods in the 1970's, of which I benefited. I miss the way that decade began for the optimism and courage to experiment.
Absolutely, how many ghetto kids are in the school? It weeds them out through $ and expulsions.
Thinking the Montessori system is relevant to the public system shows your schooling failed.
Montessori has the ability to chose pedagogy so certainly has facets that are the quite good and should be applied publicly except for liberal arts graduate ideals.
This study is very young children, limited pregnancies and gang bangers, and also not random. It's randomised on kids who enter the lottery.
Discipline is the only thing that matters in schools, $, class sizes, teacher education levels above average, amazing resources all don't matter except how it apply to discipline. We have 100+ years of data. Air-conditioning to control behavior is an example of what helps. Liberal arts graduates destroy anything else that could work so don't interact with them, stay outside their broken world.
I send my child to a private Montessori school. With that said, there's no denying that sending your child to a private Montessori school is similar to parents who buy books in learning to parent are typically better parents not because they read the books but because they care enough to buy the books. If you care enough to send your child to a Montessori school, the parent is invested in the child's success and I think that's way more important.
I spent months doing research for a blog post about One Laptop Per Child last year, and came to a related, but more broad conclusion: it's extremely easy to reach misleading conclusions when studying novel educational methods. No strong conclusion comes without qualifiers related to culture and economics. Moreover, a shocking amount of harm has been done by people trying to apply an educational method outside of the socioeconomic context where its efficacy was proven.
There's a dilemma here, because in order to find ways to improve education, we have to try stuff, right? But how do we remedy the situation when those experiments fail? That's less related to the Montessori thing, but it's interesting to think about.
I did high school at a prestigious technical school at my hometown, hard to get in, very competitive. The education itself wasn't that much better than my previous school but they had the name recognition and as getting in was very hard, likely the best students around town.
Almost 100% pass rate to college, mostly the best colleges. Did the education provided there affect this? Likely, but it was much more the self selection of having the best students that were doing a SAT like test to get in.
> If you care enough to send your child to a Montessori school
Think you mean to say that if you are well be enough to send your child to a private school...I try not to pull out the "privilege" card but good grief.
I went to a Montessori school in the Netherlands and feel like it failed me. Just one data point and maybe it was just a bad school.
I have autism and nobody noticed or did anything about it until it was time to start preparing for high school in seventh grade. I had read all the books in the school library but was not able to spell and write. It was just way to easy for me to escape work I did not want to do.
We moved after I started high school and my sisters had to change school because of it. One of the first things they noticed at their new school is how incredibly lazy they where.
I am very happy working as a mailman but I do wonder what I would be doing now if I had learned how to study and learn at a younger age.
I want to offer a different data point. I took my daughter to a Montessori-adjacent school for 3 years. It's not Montessori exactly and they didn't advertise as such but they had a different European name attached to it that is downstream from Montessori. They had multi-age education, stressed in children directed learning and individual growth, they didn't have exams, etc.
I changed my daughter this year and overall I'm disappointed in that school. There were many issues but the most important ones to me where:
- No exams, only individual growth meant there's no guarantee the kid is learning at a good pace. When I worked with her at home I could easily identify many gaps and deficiencies. She's now struggling a bit in her new school because of this but I think it will resolve soon.
- Because they didn't like comparing kids to standards or among each other the feedback I received was useless. It was always "she's doing excellent, we see strong growth" but it wasn't true.
- The school rejected most parent feedback and issues raised with something "maybe this style of education is not for you". For example, I know of a few other kids that had to leave because the school didn't take action against bullying because they didn't believe in punishments, etc.
I have to say there were good things too, in particular my daughter really enjoyed it there and formed strong bonds with other kids. I think in general it was ok for elementary education but I strongly think it's not after that and I now have a perhaps unjust bias against Montessori and derivatives.
No exams, only individual growth meant there's no guarantee the kid is learning at a good pace.
that's not true. it is possible to notice if a kid is learning at a good pace without exams. that is part of what the montessori method is about.
it sounds like this school just picked the things they liked but did not understand the point. the core of the montessori method is intensive observation, to understand what the children need and how they can thrive. it looks like this didn't happen in your daugthers school.
There is definitely a survivor bias. It probably works well for those kids who make it through. The kids who it isn’t working for, leave and there are so many of them.
I wonder sometimes if that kind of school is only good for the high-strung go-getter child prodigy types because they are so hands off. But the very lack of metrics and standardization that purports to help with that kind of mission unfortunately certainly makes the shopping a lot harder for prospective parents. Similar with other private schools later on. Is it a good academically strong place where kids get pushed and excel later? Or is it a party den where rich kids joke around and snort coke all day? Hard to tell. It also depends on the student and parent body itself. Good luck :-)
Another thing that kind of tempers my opinion of this kind of school is anecdotal, some friends were lamenting that in their otherwise excellent public elementary school in an affluent district, some parents are pulling their kids out of _first grade_ and moving to private school because "there is not enough homework." What a sad image.
Only one-fifth of parents gave permission to participate in the study, the schools differed in how “authentic” their Montessori approach was, and the measurements only go up to the end of kindergarten. So we do not know whether the differences persist.
If anybody wants to give it a go, my benchmarks are:
1) find reviews of parents, especially no abuse, shouting, kids in the last year should LOVE the place.
2) observe even for few minutes a class in their focus time -- you will feel almost shocked if you haven't seen this before -- like you entered Santa's workshop -- children should be deeply engaged in their activities. If you haven't seen it before you might suspect abuse (that's why point 1 is so important), no way kids love to wipe the floors, lay tables, prepare food and so on, but they actually do.
And all that done in almost complete silence.
Proper Montessori with good, empathetic, dedicated educators is amazing!
Yeah. Certainly if the US regular pre-school system looks anything like the UK one, the difference between non-Montessori and Montessori pre-schools in the sorts of play actually encouraged probably isn't that big. The authors attempt to control for notable differences in the demographics of the treatment group, but they're there (and in this case, the higher incomes of the parents in the treatment group probably not just a wealth effect, but a correlate of other systematic differences with the parents who didn't...)
Low participation rate shouldn't matter too much for an RCT right? Just makes the sample smaller so finding statistically significant results is harder.
Different levels of Montessori authenticity make the results even more impressive. They do have some inclusion criteria, like 2/3 of the teachers must be AMI/AMS certified but even so I'd expect a lot of these public school montessori programs to be less "true montessori" than what you'd get at a fully certified AMI/AMS school.
Having been through Montessori, I think it's fantastic for kids that are naturally self-driven. I had a great time when it came to learning science and English (the two subjects I cared the most about).
Howrver, I was also pretty far behind in math for reasons unrelated to ability (standardized testing and secondary educational success indicate that I'm actually pretty good at math). I also left with very underdeveloped time management and study skills.
Could these downsides have been mitigated? Definitely, and my parents largely made sure they were. But in talking to my peers at the time, my parents after the fact, and parents of to hers that went to Montessori schools, I think the general idea holds.
Point being that self driven education is fantastic for a lot of reasons. But it will also let a lot of kids stay far behind their ability if not carefully monitored.
I think there might be a pattern across education with a strong ideology (Montessori, Waldorf, Classical education, etc) that they aren't very good at recognizing when the ideology is failing a kid. The relatively weak and mushy educational philosophy of a normal public school is also a somewhat reasonable way to run a school that has to take kids wherever they are at and wherever they came from.
That's taken care of in the study design. The population was all kids who applied to the lottery. And the treatment group wasn't those who actually attended the Montessori school, but those who were offered a place due to the lottery.
So I don't see how special needs would bias the results. If the lottery excludes those with special needs (either by design or due to self-selection) then there's no bias between control group and treatment group. If the lottery doesn't exclude but the enrollment decision is biased by special needs, then it doesn't matter because they use ITT and not enrolment.
Given all the money spent on trying different educational models to achieve better outcomes, it's really gratifying to see a result suggesting that improvement is actually possible. I have a lot of teachers in my family and they tend to take the perspective that education is an engineering problem rather than a research problem. That is, any apparent progress is due to extra funding or filtering students or the like.
> "Those costs do not include anticipated savings from improved teacher morale and retention, a dynamic demonstrated in other data."
That seems like some kind of supportive evidence as well. Teachers should logically be happier when working inside a system optimized for teaching efficacy!
Personally: we put our child in a Montessori preschool because we liked its emphasis on self-directed learning (I kind of think all learning has to be self-directed on some level. Even a lecture requires you to listen to and think about the lecture, instead of something else). We later moved him to a Reggio Emilia program for non-pedagogical reasons (there were problems with the building that the Montessori school was in). They're definitely different—in Montessori, he mostly played on his own, and in Reggio we now see him in pairs and groups all the time. I have no idea which is better, but his teachers at the Reggio school seem to like it.
Most of public schools over the world struggle with much more basic problems than methods or programs. The most important thing IMHO is a stable environment. You can use the very best methods and programs, but if teachers change frequently, like it become more and more a norm in public schools, all these don't matter much really.
Somehow most of my circle of friends are public school teachers. Sure, there are teachers who forgot their "why" and only still do it for the (not very impressive) paycheck and eventual pension. But most teachers really, REALLY care about seeing kids succeed. The problems they talk about frequently are:
1. Lack of support from parents. Many parents treat school as free daycare and are not invested at all in their kids. They don't care of their kid gets good grades, they don't care if they get bad grades. They don't come to parent-teacher conferences. When their kid gets in trouble, they either insist that their kid didn't do anything wrong. Or literally tell the school, "hey, after that morning bell rings, he's your problem, don't hassle me about it."
2. Lack of funding. Need I say more.
3. Lack of authority. If a kid is being constantly disruptive, the teachers are told they just have to deal with it. They can't eject a kid from the classroom for ANY reason except when physical harm is imminent. My son's class had several students who were pretty much allowed to be on their chromebooks all day every day because the alternative was constant verbal abuse toward the their classmates and teacher. My son thought this was deeply unfair. He wasn't wrong.
4. Many school systems have a kind of twisted version of "no child left behind." All the kids who have special educational, emotional, or behavioral needs get plopped into regular classrooms with regular teachers. This is bad for basically everyone. The kids with special needs aren't getting the specialized teaching they require. If they are disruptive (and they often are when they aren't getting what they need), the whole class falls behind in learning because the teacher has to spend 1/2 their time dealing with 1/30th of the class.
Or even more basic, if the parents don't have the time or temperament to properly participate in parenting, then the teachers or the school aren't really going to matter either.
Table S34 shows that over 20% of the control group either stayed home or didn't provide info on what they did. (Compared with ~4% of the intent-to-treat group)
So, sadly, they weren't able to directly compare 'public Montessori PK3' with 'public non-Montessori PK3'.
That lowers the statistical power of the experiment. It does not bias it. That's the beauty of intention-to-treat designs: they trade away bias for lower power -- a worthwhile trade every day of the week.
So long as it's a true Montessori and not just in name only.
The number of programs I see touting Montessori, Classical, and other models is wild. Usually it's charter and private schools that say one thing but do another.
Might be due to many other things than the Montessori methodology. Such as peer quality and teacher quality, potentially better and more expensive/healthy lunches or a million other things.
montessori methodology and training (at least as certified by AMI) is a strong selector for teacher quality. trainees have to spend 90 hours in class just observing children and writing reports about their observations as part of their training. they learn to understand what the kids need and how to teach them. i am not aware that traditional teacher education does any of that.
likewise peer quality should not be even a factor because of the way how montessori education works. children are not given the opportunity to disrupt others.
the methodology is all-encompassing. it affects the children from the moment they enter the school, until they leave to go home. most of the potential other factors in the school are eliminated by the methodology itself.
it's hard to envision. you have to observe a class in action to understand why.
My kids went to Montessori school, first private which was good, they learned a lot of life skills, not so much academics tbh, which is why I switched them to public Montessori, which was in name only.
What worked for us better is competence grading which is Summit system that originated in California.
But principles are system are great, if you can make it work. It requires effort from teachers and parents and all. It is not trivial to make it work everywhere.
The article doesn't really address why Montessori programs performed better at lower costs: these classrooms emphasize self-directed, hands-on learning where children choose activities based on their interests, driving independence and curiosity. Traditional classrooms follow a rigid teacher-led curriculum with structured lessons and uniform pacing for all students.
There's a nonprofit Montessori school running in the biggest slum in Bangkok, Thailand which provides free schooling to the slums kids. It seems to work well.
They're always looking for foreign tourists to help teach English, even if it's just for a few days or a week.
I went to a Montessori school from pre-K through 6th grade. I totally agree with this article. It is not easy to make this work on a public school-sized scale. The problem in education is not funding. We were a private school, but we made it work on a shoestring.
The biggest problem with public school is school size and class size. The last century of school building built prison-like megaliths, when it should have built a much more distributed system. Class sizes under 20 and schools under 120 at least through middle school would raise a far less pathologically self-centered society. But most people who vote/make decisions would have to care more deeply, so I think it's a non-starter in the US, and more and more some other countries.
Kids stop caring way too young as a self-preservation mechanism. This means many of them also stop trying... It's a spiral that can only be broken by restructuring.
Sounds good. The school systems are messed up, everybody agrees on that. But the article is missing out the underlying cause for the results. What exactly caused the beneficial outcome? Montessori itself is quite a vast term nowadays.
The article is clear — lottery offer of a seat in a school which met inclusion criteria. Inclusion criteria are clearly outlined in the supplemental materials which are a single URL away which also include details on the allocation.
In Manhattan, all the preschools we looked at were either Montessori style or Reggio Emilia approach. I could not detect any meaningful difference between them.
I compared Montessori and non Montessori labeled daycares/preschools for my 3 and 4 year olds, and was unable to discern a meaningful difference in the course of the day.
Edit: I ended up going with the daycare that had cameras (so that at least management could audit employees), and a livestream for the parents, which was at a non Montessori daycare. Staff turnover also seemed lower. Was more expensive, but have been happy with results.
From the article:
"All 24 public study Montessori schools met basic Montessori criteria (SI Appendix, section 3A), but implementation varied widely. "
"The final implementation criteria for school inclusion were thus:
• At least 66% of the lead Primary classroom teachers are trained by one of the two most prominent Montessori
teacher training organizations, the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) or the American Montessori
Society (AMS). One school was excluded on this basis.
• No more than two adults, the trained teacher and a non-teaching assistant, in the classroom on a regular basis.
No school was excluded on this basis.
• Classrooms are mixed-age, with at least 18 children ranging from 3 to 6 years old. Five schools did not mix
ages so were excluded.
• At least a 2-hour uninterrupted free choice period every day. Five schools were excluded on this basis.
• Each classroom has at least 80% of the complete set of roughly 150 Montessori Primary materials, and fewer
than 5% of the materials available to children in the classroom are not Montessori materials. No school was
excluded for failing to meet this criterion."
So seems like the criteria for this research is fairly good.
In general though it's hard to tell if a school is Montessori or not. The method is not trademarked and anyone can claim to be a Montessori school ,or Montessori inspired etc...
There are two organizations that certify - AMI, which was created by Maria Montessori's daughter and functions mostly in Europe, and AMS which is an American organization founded by people inspired by the Montessori method.
AMI is stricter while AMS is more modern, but most places that identify as Montessori is neither.
I would say the best way to identify if a school is Montessori is first if they have mixed-age classrooms, the standard is a 3 year class (so 1-3, 4-6, 7-9...).
If all the kids in a class are in the same age, it's not Montessori.
There are two actual standards around this (AMI and AMS), but therm "Montessori" is mainly fungible in the day care market.
The difference between these two, from my experience, is HUGE. Certified AMI schools, while a little more rigid in terms of teaching fine motor skills, generally have been better at making my kid more independent at doing things he likes to do. AMS schools are kind of wishy washy by comparison, and my kid was bored and under-engaged.
Additionally, even schools that label themselves Montessori will have significant differences in how the educational concepts are applied and to what degree. It’s not a regimented approach/program. I only say this to suggest that any parent interested in Montessori schools should definitely visit and ask questions before enrolling your student. Make sure that the experience will align with your expectations.
In my experience, I would say no. Same as similar approaches (e.g. Waldorfschule)
Once I asked some advocate of the method, what was it exactly; the reply was very good and detailed, but then I pointed out institutes that “follow” the method, which were nothing as what he described. From that point, it was a mess. “Well, you must not absolutely do it that way” “there are variations” etc. I was pretty dissatisfied with the description, and was clear that is not very well defined.
WillAdams|4 months ago
I would really like to see an extension of this learning method up through high school --- the closest thing I'm aware of was a school I attended in Mississippi for a couple of years --- classes were divided between academic and social, social classes (homeroom, phys ed, social studies, &c.) were attended at one's age, while academic classes (reading, math, science, geography, history, &c.) were by ability (with a limit on no more than 4 grades ahead up to 8th grade) --- after 8th grade that was removed and students were allowed to take any classes.
Some of the faculty were accredited as faculty at a local college, and where warranted, either professors travelled from there to the school, or students travelled to the college for classes --- it wasn't uncommon for students to graduate high school and simultaneously be awarded a college degree.
Apparently, the system was deemed unfair because it accorded a benefit to the students who were able to take advantage of it, with no commensurate compensation for those who were not, so the Miss. State Supreme Court dismantled it.
sushp|4 months ago
Zigurd|4 months ago
unethical_ban|4 months ago
If an 8 year old can do algebra, let them cook.
brightball|4 months ago
At the elementary level, up until about 3rd or 4th grade it always made more sense to me to have lots of smaller “neighborhood” level Montessori schools rather than a few large schools from Kindergarten - 6th.
thaumasiotes|4 months ago
Unless this school had more than 12 grades, why would you describe that as "the limit being removed"?
genghisjahn|4 months ago
https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-37/chapter-15...
didibus|4 months ago
My issue with this is that it just is selection bias, telling you nothing about how good the method is at teaching.
Does placing by ability actually helps student learn and score better? Or it's just that those who are good and bad already get divided up, and we know not why some are good and others are worse?
sgarland|4 months ago
phkahler|4 months ago
I came to comment (without reading it) that the study results are probably not universal. The programs are self selecting because kids not suited for it won't stay. This is not a critique of the program or the kids who dont fit it. Just an observation that its so "extreme" that only kids who benefit will stay.
JKCalhoun|4 months ago
NedF|4 months ago
Absolutely, how many ghetto kids are in the school? It weeds them out through $ and expulsions.
Thinking the Montessori system is relevant to the public system shows your schooling failed.
Montessori has the ability to chose pedagogy so certainly has facets that are the quite good and should be applied publicly except for liberal arts graduate ideals.
This study is very young children, limited pregnancies and gang bangers, and also not random. It's randomised on kids who enter the lottery.
Discipline is the only thing that matters in schools, $, class sizes, teacher education levels above average, amazing resources all don't matter except how it apply to discipline. We have 100+ years of data. Air-conditioning to control behavior is an example of what helps. Liberal arts graduates destroy anything else that could work so don't interact with them, stay outside their broken world.
PiRho3141|4 months ago
ryukoposting|4 months ago
There's a dilemma here, because in order to find ways to improve education, we have to try stuff, right? But how do we remedy the situation when those experiments fail? That's less related to the Montessori thing, but it's interesting to think about.
mlinhares|4 months ago
Almost 100% pass rate to college, mostly the best colleges. Did the education provided there affect this? Likely, but it was much more the self selection of having the best students that were doing a SAT like test to get in.
Eridrus|4 months ago
jedimastert|4 months ago
Think you mean to say that if you are well be enough to send your child to a private school...I try not to pull out the "privilege" card but good grief.
spoon404|4 months ago
I have autism and nobody noticed or did anything about it until it was time to start preparing for high school in seventh grade. I had read all the books in the school library but was not able to spell and write. It was just way to easy for me to escape work I did not want to do.
We moved after I started high school and my sisters had to change school because of it. One of the first things they noticed at their new school is how incredibly lazy they where.
I am very happy working as a mailman but I do wonder what I would be doing now if I had learned how to study and learn at a younger age.
em-bee|4 months ago
bonoboTP|4 months ago
lz400|4 months ago
I changed my daughter this year and overall I'm disappointed in that school. There were many issues but the most important ones to me where:
- No exams, only individual growth meant there's no guarantee the kid is learning at a good pace. When I worked with her at home I could easily identify many gaps and deficiencies. She's now struggling a bit in her new school because of this but I think it will resolve soon.
- Because they didn't like comparing kids to standards or among each other the feedback I received was useless. It was always "she's doing excellent, we see strong growth" but it wasn't true.
- The school rejected most parent feedback and issues raised with something "maybe this style of education is not for you". For example, I know of a few other kids that had to leave because the school didn't take action against bullying because they didn't believe in punishments, etc.
I have to say there were good things too, in particular my daughter really enjoyed it there and formed strong bonds with other kids. I think in general it was ok for elementary education but I strongly think it's not after that and I now have a perhaps unjust bias against Montessori and derivatives.
em-bee|4 months ago
that's not true. it is possible to notice if a kid is learning at a good pace without exams. that is part of what the montessori method is about.
it sounds like this school just picked the things they liked but did not understand the point. the core of the montessori method is intensive observation, to understand what the children need and how they can thrive. it looks like this didn't happen in your daugthers school.
goalieca|4 months ago
foobarian|4 months ago
Another thing that kind of tempers my opinion of this kind of school is anecdotal, some friends were lamenting that in their otherwise excellent public elementary school in an affluent district, some parents are pulling their kids out of _first grade_ and moving to private school because "there is not enough homework." What a sad image.
terespuwash|4 months ago
raducu|4 months ago
Indeed there's all kinds of Montessori.
I can vouch for my daughter's .
If anybody wants to give it a go, my benchmarks are:
1) find reviews of parents, especially no abuse, shouting, kids in the last year should LOVE the place.
2) observe even for few minutes a class in their focus time -- you will feel almost shocked if you haven't seen this before -- like you entered Santa's workshop -- children should be deeply engaged in their activities. If you haven't seen it before you might suspect abuse (that's why point 1 is so important), no way kids love to wipe the floors, lay tables, prepare food and so on, but they actually do.
And all that done in almost complete silence.
Proper Montessori with good, empathetic, dedicated educators is amazing!
notahacker|4 months ago
emckay|4 months ago
Different levels of Montessori authenticity make the results even more impressive. They do have some inclusion criteria, like 2/3 of the teachers must be AMI/AMS certified but even so I'd expect a lot of these public school montessori programs to be less "true montessori" than what you'd get at a fully certified AMI/AMS school.
antasvara|4 months ago
Howrver, I was also pretty far behind in math for reasons unrelated to ability (standardized testing and secondary educational success indicate that I'm actually pretty good at math). I also left with very underdeveloped time management and study skills.
Could these downsides have been mitigated? Definitely, and my parents largely made sure they were. But in talking to my peers at the time, my parents after the fact, and parents of to hers that went to Montessori schools, I think the general idea holds.
Point being that self driven education is fantastic for a lot of reasons. But it will also let a lot of kids stay far behind their ability if not carefully monitored.
ianbicking|4 months ago
em-bee|4 months ago
if that is the case you didn't experience a good montessori program, because that should have taken care of that.
ip26|4 months ago
nerdsniper|4 months ago
rahimnathwani|4 months ago
So I don't see how special needs would bias the results. If the lottery excludes those with special needs (either by design or due to self-selection) then there's no bias between control group and treatment group. If the lottery doesn't exclude but the enrollment decision is biased by special needs, then it doesn't matter because they use ITT and not enrolment.
RhysU|4 months ago
We accept that different colleges (and other post-secondary training) at different cost points serve different populations.
We somehow do not accept the same idea for secondary or primary education. Why not improve educational outcomes for some of the population?
msteffen|4 months ago
> "Those costs do not include anticipated savings from improved teacher morale and retention, a dynamic demonstrated in other data."
That seems like some kind of supportive evidence as well. Teachers should logically be happier when working inside a system optimized for teaching efficacy!
Personally: we put our child in a Montessori preschool because we liked its emphasis on self-directed learning (I kind of think all learning has to be self-directed on some level. Even a lecture requires you to listen to and think about the lecture, instead of something else). We later moved him to a Reggio Emilia program for non-pedagogical reasons (there were problems with the building that the Montessori school was in). They're definitely different—in Montessori, he mostly played on his own, and in Reggio we now see him in pairs and groups all the time. I have no idea which is better, but his teachers at the Reggio school seem to like it.
obscurette|4 months ago
bityard|4 months ago
1. Lack of support from parents. Many parents treat school as free daycare and are not invested at all in their kids. They don't care of their kid gets good grades, they don't care if they get bad grades. They don't come to parent-teacher conferences. When their kid gets in trouble, they either insist that their kid didn't do anything wrong. Or literally tell the school, "hey, after that morning bell rings, he's your problem, don't hassle me about it."
2. Lack of funding. Need I say more.
3. Lack of authority. If a kid is being constantly disruptive, the teachers are told they just have to deal with it. They can't eject a kid from the classroom for ANY reason except when physical harm is imminent. My son's class had several students who were pretty much allowed to be on their chromebooks all day every day because the alternative was constant verbal abuse toward the their classmates and teacher. My son thought this was deeply unfair. He wasn't wrong.
4. Many school systems have a kind of twisted version of "no child left behind." All the kids who have special educational, emotional, or behavioral needs get plopped into regular classrooms with regular teachers. This is bad for basically everyone. The kids with special needs aren't getting the specialized teaching they require. If they are disruptive (and they often are when they aren't getting what they need), the whole class falls behind in learning because the teacher has to spend 1/2 their time dealing with 1/30th of the class.
spicyusername|4 months ago
shermantanktop|4 months ago
edmundsauto|4 months ago
solumos|4 months ago
rahimnathwani|4 months ago
So, sadly, they weren't able to directly compare 'public Montessori PK3' with 'public non-Montessori PK3'.
kqr|4 months ago
grendelt|4 months ago
bonoboTP|4 months ago
em-bee|4 months ago
likewise peer quality should not be even a factor because of the way how montessori education works. children are not given the opportunity to disrupt others.
the methodology is all-encompassing. it affects the children from the moment they enter the school, until they leave to go home. most of the potential other factors in the school are eliminated by the methodology itself.
it's hard to envision. you have to observe a class in action to understand why.
desireco42|4 months ago
What worked for us better is competence grading which is Summit system that originated in California.
But principles are system are great, if you can make it work. It requires effort from teachers and parents and all. It is not trivial to make it work everywhere.
anonu|4 months ago
aussieguy1234|4 months ago
They're always looking for foreign tourists to help teach English, even if it's just for a few days or a week.
jcalvinowens|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
jrh3|4 months ago
sgc|4 months ago
Kids stop caring way too young as a self-preservation mechanism. This means many of them also stop trying... It's a spiral that can only be broken by restructuring.
mmooss|4 months ago
Why not? Costs are lower, etc.
warrenmiller|4 months ago
lschueller|4 months ago
fhsm|4 months ago
https://www.pnas.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1073%2...
Talk of causation anywhere other than the unit of randomization is speculation.
silisili|4 months ago
jgalt212|4 months ago
avs733|4 months ago
You can’t understand Google unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids. — Marissa Mayer
beng-nl|4 months ago
elzbardico|4 months ago
It is not like they were Abel and Gauss as impressionable tech workers seem to think.
lotsofpulp|4 months ago
I compared Montessori and non Montessori labeled daycares/preschools for my 3 and 4 year olds, and was unable to discern a meaningful difference in the course of the day.
Edit: I ended up going with the daycare that had cameras (so that at least management could audit employees), and a livestream for the parents, which was at a non Montessori daycare. Staff turnover also seemed lower. Was more expensive, but have been happy with results.
Illniyar|4 months ago
"The final implementation criteria for school inclusion were thus:
• At least 66% of the lead Primary classroom teachers are trained by one of the two most prominent Montessori teacher training organizations, the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) or the American Montessori Society (AMS). One school was excluded on this basis.
• No more than two adults, the trained teacher and a non-teaching assistant, in the classroom on a regular basis. No school was excluded on this basis.
• Classrooms are mixed-age, with at least 18 children ranging from 3 to 6 years old. Five schools did not mix ages so were excluded.
• At least a 2-hour uninterrupted free choice period every day. Five schools were excluded on this basis.
• Each classroom has at least 80% of the complete set of roughly 150 Montessori Primary materials, and fewer than 5% of the materials available to children in the classroom are not Montessori materials. No school was excluded for failing to meet this criterion."
So seems like the criteria for this research is fairly good.
In general though it's hard to tell if a school is Montessori or not. The method is not trademarked and anyone can claim to be a Montessori school ,or Montessori inspired etc...
There are two organizations that certify - AMI, which was created by Maria Montessori's daughter and functions mostly in Europe, and AMS which is an American organization founded by people inspired by the Montessori method.
AMI is stricter while AMS is more modern, but most places that identify as Montessori is neither.
I would say the best way to identify if a school is Montessori is first if they have mixed-age classrooms, the standard is a 3 year class (so 1-3, 4-6, 7-9...).
If all the kids in a class are in the same age, it's not Montessori.
Second, for preschool, you expect the class to be very organized with intermittent shelves and work areas, and very neat (no mountain of toys etc...) - https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=montessori+classroom
schainks|4 months ago
The difference between these two, from my experience, is HUGE. Certified AMI schools, while a little more rigid in terms of teaching fine motor skills, generally have been better at making my kid more independent at doing things he likes to do. AMS schools are kind of wishy washy by comparison, and my kid was bored and under-engaged.
turnsout|4 months ago
Look for a school/teachers with AMI (Association Montessori Internationale) certification.
giobox|4 months ago
germinalphrase|4 months ago
f1shy|4 months ago
Once I asked some advocate of the method, what was it exactly; the reply was very good and detailed, but then I pointed out institutes that “follow” the method, which were nothing as what he described. From that point, it was a mess. “Well, you must not absolutely do it that way” “there are variations” etc. I was pretty dissatisfied with the description, and was clear that is not very well defined.