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.
>As shown in Figure S1, we began with a list of 588 public Montessori schools in the United States supplied by the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector
>[procedural stuff, possibly introducing bias but not definitional]
>Finally, because “Montessori” is not a trademarked term, we checked whether schools met our minimum standards for Montessori inclusion
>- 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. [italics mine, furthermore, holy crap!]
I think one thing that is particularly noticeable is that, while there is definitely some particular form of education being put forward here which is interesting, there is obviously a very "aesthetic" trend as well, because plenty of schools are failing on the practices and the teachers while somehow none are failing the materials. But maybe this is actually just path-dependence in measuring the exclusion per criterion?
These were randomised. It sounds like they eliminated this selection bias.
Also, this is just about preschool. For regular school, I've grown more skeptical, because it didn't work well for either of my kids. They struggled with the independence and planning, and didn't get much done. One switched to special education during primary school and is doing excellent there (but that has much more guidance and costs more, though I wish it was available for everybody), the other switched to a regular school during secondary school after almost failing to pass year after year despite his extraordinary intelligence. He's doing somewhat better now.
It's a good option to have, but it's quite likely the advantage is bigger for preschool than school.
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.
scythe|4 months ago
>As shown in Figure S1, we began with a list of 588 public Montessori schools in the United States supplied by the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector
>[procedural stuff, possibly introducing bias but not definitional]
>Finally, because “Montessori” is not a trademarked term, we checked whether schools met our minimum standards for Montessori inclusion
>- 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. [italics mine, furthermore, holy crap!]
I think one thing that is particularly noticeable is that, while there is definitely some particular form of education being put forward here which is interesting, there is obviously a very "aesthetic" trend as well, because plenty of schools are failing on the practices and the teachers while somehow none are failing the materials. But maybe this is actually just path-dependence in measuring the exclusion per criterion?
novia|4 months ago
silisili|4 months ago
mcv|4 months ago
Also, this is just about preschool. For regular school, I've grown more skeptical, because it didn't work well for either of my kids. They struggled with the independence and planning, and didn't get much done. One switched to special education during primary school and is doing excellent there (but that has much more guidance and costs more, though I wish it was available for everybody), the other switched to a regular school during secondary school after almost failing to pass year after year despite his extraordinary intelligence. He's doing somewhat better now.
It's a good option to have, but it's quite likely the advantage is bigger for preschool than school.