[HN Gopher] Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outco...
___________________________________________________________________
Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower
costs: study
Author : strict9
Score : 197 points
Date : 2025-10-22 19:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| lschueller wrote:
| 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.
| fhsm wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1073%2...
|
| Talk of causation anywhere other than the unit of randomization
| is speculation.
| novia wrote:
| the definition in your linked paper is quite self referential
| scythe wrote:
| The definition is holistic:
|
| >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?
| silisili wrote:
| The underlying cause is that only well to do parents choose
| Montessori. None of the pesky low income folks to throw off the
| test score.
| mcv wrote:
| 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.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| So while it is randomized in the terms of who they chose to
| participate, the students did attend already existing
| schools. This could lead to selection bias from the
| participates, as the schools themselves are located in
| wealthier areas as that is where their clientele are.
|
| Lower income families may not have been able to take
| advantage of the lottery due to distance constrains thus
| self-opting out.
|
| I have not read the study methodology details, the schools
| may have been chosen to avoid this problem but just wanted
| to point out that just because something say "random
| lottery" it may not be.
| dmurray wrote:
| But the control group was families who did opt in and who
| lost the lottery.
| cma wrote:
| Still the ones who got in would be with more other
| students who opted in, the ones who didn't get in would
| be with more students who didn't opt-in to the lottery.
|
| You would need to have a second group of those who lost
| the lottery and were all put into the same non-Montessori
| school with no others who didn't opt-in maybe.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Oh you mean it could all be peer group effects?
| cma wrote:
| Yeah but even then teachers that opt in to train in
| Montessori might just be better teachers, and converting
| a whole school system to Montessori, training everyone,
| might not have as good results.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I think it largely depends upon the child. I thrived in a
| Montessori environment right through sixth grade before
| transitioning to a standard "prep school" and found myself
| way ahead of the other kids in a lot of things.
| Alternately, my son was much the same as your kid. He
| struggled in a Montessori school which was very similar to
| the one I went to (in fact, my lower elementary teacher was
| the learning specialist at his school while he was there).
| He couldn't handle the open structured style of the
| learning, and just floundered badly. We ended up getting
| him into a much more structured special ed school where he
| succeeded and is now off doing well at college.
| mcv wrote:
| It absolutely depends on the child. I phrased it too
| generally. I like the idea of Montessori a lot, but it
| depends a lot on executive skills: being able to plan,
| start project, finish projects, etc. My kids both sucked
| at that, and I'm not great at it either. My oldest son,
| despite his stellar IQ, completely drowned in projects.
| No idea what to do, when to start, how to start, how to
| finish it, and even when he finished it, he forgot to
| turn it in. He simply needs more guidance.
|
| He's now finally getting better at it, at 16, which is
| about time, because at the university, you have to be
| able to do all of this. I sucked at it in university, so
| maybe it's actually good that he ran into these problems
| earlier than that, but for him to actually finish school,
| it was not a good fit.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is "Montessori" sufficiently defined?
|
| 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.
| schainks wrote:
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| How many schools of each standard has your kid been to? For
| how many years?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| 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.
| f1shy wrote:
| 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.
| giobox wrote:
| I've had similar experiences too, it's almost like trying to
| get a room full of software engineers to agree on a definition
| of "Agile".
| Illniyar wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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
| turnsout wrote:
| Unfortunately, Maria Montessori lost control over her name, and
| now literally any daycare or school can label themselves
| "Montessori."
|
| Look for a school/teachers with AMI (Association Montessori
| Internationale) certification.
| solumos wrote:
| As a product of public montessori, I couldn't agree more
| avs733 wrote:
| As someone who has worked in education for about a decade now, I
| use this quote a lot:
|
| You can't understand Google unless you know that both Larry and
| Sergey were Montessori kids. -- Marissa Mayer
| beng-nl wrote:
| Sorry, I have no idea what to conclude from this. Can you
| explain?
| elzbardico wrote:
| There's a lot of luck in Larry and Sergey history.
|
| It is not like they were Abel and Gauss as impressionable tech
| workers seem to think.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Any alternative school system is lower-cost than public schools
| if they don't have to support the needs of students with severe
| disabilities.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| 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.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Schools are not designed to calculate the actual cost on a
| per student basis.
|
| Big ticket items like a dedicated SPED department, or a
| professional working 1:1 with a student can be accounted for.
| But if a special needs child participates in a standard class
| (which they do) and the standard teacher needs to do more
| than average work to accommodate them; that cost is not
| earmarked for that specific student. Once the bean counters
| see it, it is just "teacher salary", which gets averaged out
| across all the students.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| You are correct.
|
| I only read up on the 'impact' part of the study's claim,
| not the 'lower cost' part. I thought you were talking about
| the impact part.
|
| The cost part is obviously suspect, for the reason you
| stated. It is so obviously suspect that I had
| subconsciously 'tuned it out'!
| stdbrouw wrote:
| Yeah, the intention to treat design is a particularly nice
| touch, not so common outside of biostatistics. They also
| compare the full cost of Montessori vs. plain ol', not the
| cost to the state, which could otherwise have given the
| Montessori schools (which are in wealthier neighborhoods on
| average) an unfair advantage if they have a lot of parents
| chipping in with donations and help. I've skimmed through the
| methods section and it does seem like they've gone to great
| lengths to allow for a fair comparison.
|
| That doesn't necessarily mean the result will extrapolate,
| though. It seems plausible that teachers in Montessori
| schools are more motivated and knowledgeable than the average
| teacher and have made a conscious decision to teach in such a
| school. If every public school were to become a Montessori
| school, you would still get the cost savings (student-to-
| teacher ratios are higher in Montessori!) but you might lose
| that above-average enthusiasm and expertise and so the
| learning gains might not carry over. It's just really hard to
| know whether something might generalize in the educational
| sciences.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I've skimmed through the methods section and it does seem
| like they've gone to great lengths to allow for a fair
| comparison. That doesn't necessarily mean the result will
| extrapolate
|
| Yes, I had exactly the same reaction. They appear to be
| presenting their work honestly, completely and clearly, so
| that other people have enough information to draw their own
| conclusions.
| em-bee wrote:
| _you might lose that above-average enthusiasm and
| expertise_
|
| yes, but montessori training can be done in one year (if
| you do it fulltime, my wife did i over multiple years 2 or
| 3 months each summer)), and it is entirely child focused.
| very different from traditional teacher training.
|
| if we assume that every teacher starts their training with
| some amount of enthusiasm then the difference in enthusiasm
| and even more so in expertise should be minimal.
| terespuwash wrote:
| 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.
| emckay wrote:
| 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.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I think the risk is that there is some systematic difference
| between those who chose to participate and the overall
| population of public Montessori kids. For instance, maybe
| those with high incomes disproportionately chose to
| participate, and Montessori strengthens learning for this
| group, but if we could measure the whole population the
| result is more mixed. It can't be a fully RCT if there's some
| kind of opt-in provision (which is not to say that an opt-in
| provision is bad, or a study that is not fully RCT is
| irrelevant).
| mmooss wrote:
| This is a speculative criticism about a hypothetical
| problem. How random was the study?
| notahacker wrote:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2506130122 You
| could have answered your own question by reading the
| abstract, which makes it clear that the OP's conjecture
| was correct: the lotteries were random or _somewhat_
| random, but the groups which consented to the study were
| notably different, with the treatment group being richer,
| more educated and whiter. They did of course attempt to
| control for this, whether the controls were adequate or
| omitted other underlying differences is another question.
| raducu wrote:
| >. authentic" their Montessori approach was.
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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...)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| 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'.
| PiRho3141 wrote:
| 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.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > 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.
| whateveracct wrote:
| It's both.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you are well be enough to send your child to a private
| school_
|
| This is a similar but separate effect. Rich, uncaring parents
| can raise unachieving idiots.
|
| It's easier to be caring with resources. But plenty of public
| school difference-in-outcome studies have found a signal from
| parental participation that I believe remained after
| adjusting for income.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| I have friends who have a kid in one of those schools on
| financial aid
| gedy wrote:
| My kids went to a free charter school, with similar setup and
| care from parents. The outcomes were notable and it wasn't
| really about privilege imho. (Though some activist type folks
| I know who count "parents who care" as a form a privilege.)
| andrepd wrote:
| Which it is? From the child's pov obviously, not from the
| parent's.
| asdff wrote:
| In my experience in private schooling only about half the
| kids come from money. The rest are on financial aid.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| 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.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > But how do we remedy the situation when those experiments
| fail?
|
| Or worse, know we need a remedy when no one is even checking
| for success or failure?
|
| Thankfully the US is well on its way to dismantling the
| Department of Education. So no stuffy bureaucrats getting in
| the way /s
| ryukoposting wrote:
| In OLPC's case, the remedy was a retroactive, panicked
| attempt at teaching teachers how to use the laptops, an
| effort that largely failed.
|
| You're exactly right, though. OLPC failed mostly because it
| didn't think to teach the teachers how to use the laptops
| as classroom tools (not that they would have succeeded
| otherwise). Countries that had the infrastructure to do the
| onboarding themselves were relatively well-set up to teach
| their kids anyway.
|
| If this is interesting to you, I highly recommend Morgan
| Ames' _The Charisma Machine._
| mlinhares wrote:
| 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.
| zorked wrote:
| In my hometown there is something like that. There are two
| schools, one of them had a year with particularly good
| approval rates. Competitive parents started preferring that
| school, finding ways to send their kids there. That school
| has been sustaining better approval rates since then.
|
| Which should make no sense because the teachers themselves
| work odd years in one school, even years in the other school.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > Which should make no sense because the teachers
| themselves work odd years in one school, even years in the
| other school.
|
| The finding here is, competitive parents have an impact on
| the college approval rates of their children. Get them to
| all send their kids to the same school, that school gets
| better approval rates, regardless of the teachers.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It makes perfect sense if we approach it from the stance
| that parents and peers matter more than the teachers.
| Anecdotally, kids who have parents who give a crap and
| peers who share similar goals (seek good grades, entrance
| to college, not doing drugs, etc) tend to do better in
| school.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Which should make no sense because the teachers
| themselves work odd years in one school, even years in the
| other school.
|
| Peers make a huge difference. Before university, I split my
| high school between two schools - one that was near the top
| academically, and one that was quite poor. The latter did
| have some smart students intellectually, but almost none
| did well academically because it wasn't valued by their
| peers.
|
| Then I went to a very average state university for
| undergrad, and a top school for graduate studies. The
| difference wasn't that high in terms of teaching (the
| average school actually had much better teachers, but
| offset it by low expectations). The _real_ difference was
| in the peers.
|
| You like engineering? You like coding? Want to do some cool
| side project? Very hard to find someone like you in that
| average university.
|
| Then when I started working, I started tutoring some middle
| school kids. The kids seemed totally capable mentally, and
| I was trying to figure out how they can't retain simple
| facts like number of months in a year. Until finally it hit
| me. They don't have problems _learning_ things. It 's just
| that no one in their orbit (peers or parents) _care_ if
| they know these things. When I was a kid, I 'd be an idiot
| amongst my fellow students if I didn't know it. So I did.
| Everyone did.
|
| But if you're around people who think it's OK not to know
| how many days are in a year, chances are you won't know it,
| no matter how intelligent you are.
| asdff wrote:
| Theres also a lot of college prep going on with private
| schools. We had far higher college adviser to student ratios
| than any public school. They started working with you earlier
| than any public school. No grade inflation and college
| admissions knew that and knew the reputation of the
| highschool. Academically the schedule, courseload, workload,
| things like freedom to pick different electives, were all
| designed to mirror college.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Ok, but this was an RCT, so enrollment was randomized after
| people self selected into this experiment.
| foxglacier wrote:
| It also had an obvious and unhelpful result. Of course kids
| who spend all day learning will know that stuff better than
| kids who don't. What really matters is long term life
| outcomes.
|
| Rudolf Steiner would say all that early learning is harmful
| and they should have been playing and imagining spiritual
| things.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "What really matters is long term life outcomes."
|
| What would those be and how do we measure them?
|
| There are studies that show Montessori students tend to
| have better executive function, better working memory, and
| no significant difference in creativity. I'm not aware of
| any that look at lifetime income or anything like that.
| foxglacier wrote:
| I'm not exactly sure, but measuring performance on
| education tests as a child is just a proxy for the whole
| point of education and raising children and it could even
| be backwards.
| WillAdams wrote:
| 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.
| Zigurd wrote:
| 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.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, as one worked forward, one would arrive in the new
| class and be handed a stack of work required to catch up to
| where the class was at (moving forward at the end of a school
| year was strongly discouraged, but some kids would do it ---
| if need be, one could take the unfinished assignments home at
| the end of the year and work on them over the summer, turning
| them in at the beginning of the year).
| sushp wrote:
| 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.
| WillAdams wrote:
| It really depends on the teacher (like most school systems)
| and the support of the parents --- a fellow woodworker and I
| were enlisted to help make educational aids at one of the
| schools my daughter attended) --- agree one needs to find the
| best thing for each child.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| There are different "factions" and accreditation
| organizations in Montessori. Some are more liberal and others
| are authoritarian and rigid. Not all Montessori schools are
| like you describe, but some certainly are.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I agree, and sadly this kind of gives the Montessori label
| pretty limited predictive value. Turns out you just need to
| find a good school, regardless of label.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It really comes down to the teachers skill and
| personality- and that often comes down to if the school
| can afford the best teachers. Often in the USA regular
| public schools in wealthy communities will have better
| teachers than you will find at most private Montessori
| schools.
| jaxn wrote:
| Part of schools "affording" the best teachers is not
| money, but the amount of discipline problems they need to
| deal with. Which correlates to the financial status of
| the families at that school. For tons of reasons.
|
| Which families tend to win the lottery to go to these
| schools? The parents that can afford to. Even if the
| school is free, the transportation is often not. Plus the
| parents have to have enough free time to be aware of the
| lottery for their 3 year old.
| PakG1 wrote:
| I suppose this means that Montessori is not a single
| movement, but multiple movements all claiming to be the
| proper one.
| em-bee wrote:
| most improper ones are simply capitalizing on the name
| recognition, some may have the idealism but fail in the
| implementation. if you do enough research it is pretty
| clear that only AMI accredited teachers implement the
| original method as designed by maria montessori. AMS
| comes close. and everyone else never received any form of
| montessori training at all.
|
| (disclaimer: my wife got accredited by AMI)
| adolph wrote:
| > 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
|
| There exist various implementations of Montessori. AMI was
| founded by Dr. Montessori [0] and certifies schools so that
| parents can have some assurance of adherence to a standard.
| The many materials in a Montessori classroom, including
| things that look like a dollhouse, don't exist for
| unstructured play but are learning tools for the guide and
| student to use in their work. Once the student gets a lesson
| using a material, then they can choose to practice using the
| material in their self-directed work periods, which can be in
| groups.
|
| My kids had a mostly positive mixed experience in Montessori.
| In addition to evaluating how a child comes to grip with the
| method, there is also how they work with their guide. My
| observation is that even skilled practitioners don't always
| achieve a strong rapport with every student. In those
| situations the Montessori classroom's weakness is that there
| is only one guide for all subjects as opposed to a
| traditional school's subject-specific teachers.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_Montessori_Inter
| na...
| em-bee wrote:
| _Montessori classroom 's weakness is that there is only one
| guide for all subjects as opposed to a traditional school's
| subject-specific teachers_
|
| which tradition is that? in my country subject-specific
| teachers don't appear until middle school. so that's a
| rather moot point for kindergarten and primary school.
| asdff wrote:
| >In those situations the Montessori classroom's weakness is
| that there is only one guide for all subjects as opposed to
| a traditional school's subject-specific teachers.
|
| This isn't a hardset rule. We had the main teacher but we
| also had specific teachers as well for stuff like music,
| art, languages, or gym class. By middleschool there was no
| more "main" teacher. You were basically in a committee of
| teachers all specific including science, english, and
| history by that point. Part of that I'm sure was to prepare
| you for highschool in a non montessori setting.
| zzleeper wrote:
| Same here. My three-year old loved maps and we always played
| with them (making map of her room, etc etc)
|
| We enrolled her at the local Montessori and she rushed to the
| map section but was told she is forbidden from using it until
| she takes the lesson on that or whatever is called. That
| lesson was 2-3 months away, and meanwhile all other kids were
| able to play with the maps.
|
| This, combined with other rigidities and a crazy schedule
| totally unsuited for working parents (9-1pm wtf) made it
| impossible. After struggling _a lot_ for two months, she went
| back to her old daycare and was very happy there, and is now
| at her elementary school now
| sgarland wrote:
| I'm by far not an expert on it (my wife is, she teaches
| Montessori), but AFAIK what you observed was because it
| isn't viewed as play, but as work - as in school work. All
| of the activities are called "works," and they're taken
| very seriously.
|
| Part of this is, I think, to teach responsibility; for
| example, if a student gets a work out, they're expected to
| put it back exactly how they found it. Montessori
| classrooms are incredibly well-organized, with everything
| having its (labeled) place.
| bfeynman wrote:
| Montessori is just an educational framework, I have no idea
| where you draw broad conclusion that the one or two things
| you looked at deemed it be "rigid" or little opportunity...
| Sounds like a random bad apple. There's a correlation between
| gifted children and montessori because it allows them to
| develop at their own pace which is often faster than that of
| traditional classrooms etc, it's not for everyone.
| foxglacier wrote:
| I had the exact same experience except my child is still
| there. No free play, very little time outdoors, very little
| interaction with classmates, no creativity allowed. Unhappy
| child who regularly doesn't want to go. We try to give her
| outdoor play with friends after preschool to make up for it.
| sgarland wrote:
| I'm sorry you've had that experience. My kids' Montessori
| school has a playground, athletic field, and butts up
| against woods, which they regularly go into for activities.
| One of the classes actually spends most of their time
| outside - weather permitting - because that teacher is
| getting her Master's in some form of education that focuses
| on outdoor learning.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that
| Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one.
|
| Oh man... survivorship bias thinking is dangerous.
| elzbardico wrote:
| At last for me, the last thing I wanted to my son would be
| for him to become Jeff Bezos.
| objektif wrote:
| Well said, see my post above. People think that becoming
| a rich psycho is somehow great. Montessori schools I
| visited were depressing AF.
| asdff wrote:
| I attended one for elementary and middleschool. Early on
| everything we did was in groups. Take the multiplication
| flash cards and quiz eachother. Mess with the abacus. Look at
| the geological periods chart, etc. All the stuff seemed
| pretty fun to me. Yes, we had outdoor recess everyday,
| alhough we had a good setup with a big playground and some
| woods on the property. A lot of montessori setups I see now
| look really spartan like almost a daycare center.
|
| But in hindsight I could tell it depends heavily on the
| teachers as well as the students you are saddled with because
| of how much group stuff there is. There was clear divisions
| between the kids who would reliably do their work and the
| kids who procrastinated and played around flicking pencils at
| eachother all day. This was generally possible while the main
| classroom teacher was busy with some subset of students for a
| lesson or some other work.
|
| Once we got access to desktop computers we replaced the
| pencil flicking all day with games. They'd be in the main
| classroom but we'd just turn the crt monitors to the side to
| hide it. This was long before IT surveillance tools, we had
| full internet access too. Gameboys a plenty.
|
| There was a lot of fluid experimentation however. At one
| point we took all the shelving in the room and turned it in
| such a way to create sort of cubicles. I think the idea was
| to get the kids who probably had ADHD to lock in and do their
| work more vs being tempted to socialize and screw around all
| day with their friends. Eventually they banned us from
| turning the CRT monitors as well.
|
| Would a more rigid school structure help other kids? Sure,
| probably, but I don't think what public school was doing
| would have helped those kids much. Honestly montessori is a
| lot like the adult working world now that I am in that and
| see the parallels. A lot less handholding and you needing to
| not give into procrastination and ask mentors for individual
| direction from time to time. Group work and discussion
| coupled with independent work. Project based education that
| is more like actual real life work projects vs the dry
| lecture/memorize/exam patterns. That being said it was more
| "traditional" and less montessori towards the end as they had
| to prepare you for a proper highschool setup, so more
| formally scheduled classes and a lot less free time in the
| main classroom.
| em-bee wrote:
| thank you for that detailed insight. i only had the
| opportunity to observe ad learn about montessori in
| kindergarten. what you describe is pretty much what i
| expected from reading about it, but i haven't seen any
| stories from actual students who experienced it.
|
| it would seem that some groups in your class could have
| benefited from more teacher attention. or maybe from mixing
| up the groups.
| Taek wrote:
| Like anything, there are lower and higher quality
| implementations of Montessori programs. What you are saying
| here does not reflect the Montessori program I went through
| myself, and I think I can credit the Montessori program with
| a great deal of my later stage curiosity and drive to
| outperform.
|
| I would say the same of the public high school that I
| attended. The attitude of the teachers and the other students
| was fantastic, and it really helped propel me forward in
| life, gave me a ton of lessons that I don't think most people
| were able to take from their own public high schools.
|
| In both cases, my parents (Mom especially) were so incredibly
| stubborn about finding the best school for their kids. We
| literally moved the whole family to the town that had the
| best public school where my parents could afford a single
| family home. Love you Mom, thank you for caring, and to all
| other parents I would strongly advise against picking a
| school based on its philosophy. The quality of teacher
| matters much more than anything else.
| objektif wrote:
| We visited multiple Montessori schools for both my kids and
| I can confidently say that I met some of the saddest and
| coldest teachers I have ever seen in my life. I am not sure
| that is really best environment for small kids.
|
| I myself went to shitty public schools and became an
| exceptional student later on. I am doubtful about the
| impact of early education on future success.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yeah. In general I also don't like much about the vibe of
| Montessori parents.
| objektif wrote:
| What I am seeing around me is Randian psychopaths become
| Montessori parents.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Reggio is way better than the other weirdly controlling,
| Waldorf-like Montessori
| genghisjahn wrote:
| 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?
|
| https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-37/chapter-15...
| WillAdams wrote:
| No, after I left the school it was all second/third-hand from
| letters to my folks from other parents whose children were
| still attending.
| sgarland wrote:
| 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.
| didibus wrote:
| > 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?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Does placing by ability actually helps student learn and
| score better?_
|
| Yes, you shunt all the disruptive/obstinate kids into class 2
| and they can spend 4 hours of math lessons every week
| rehashing arguments about how they have a phone so they don't
| need to know what 7x12 is.
|
| This means the students in class 1 get undisrupted classes,
| learning more and raising their grades.
|
| Because of the way these things are done, it does have the
| unfortunate side effect that the kid who struggles with math
| because he's dyslexic gets put in a class with the kid who
| doesn't give a shit about math. But they'd be in the same
| even if the school _didn 't_ place by ability, so they're not
| _that_ much worse off.
| jrh3 wrote:
| 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.
| mmooss wrote:
| > It is not easy to make this work on a public school-sized
| scale.
|
| Why not? Costs are lower, etc.
| adolph wrote:
| Costs aren't exactly lower. The study noted that the cost
| savings came from higher student to teacher ratios in 1st-3rd
| offsetting higher costs of teacher training and classroom
| materials over a hypothetical amortization period. This is
| rational but not indicative of flipping a switch to save x%.
| The upfront costs of teacher training and Montessori
| materials were amortized over their expected lifespan
| of 25 y. Total costs for Montessori and traditional
| programs were divided by the average number of children in
| each type of classroom at the PK3, PK4, and
| kindergarten years, then summed to yield the cost
| difference of Montessori and traditional programming over
| three years of public preschool.
|
| 0. https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2506130122
| em-bee wrote:
| _higher costs of teacher training and classroom materials_
|
| the current cost of montessori teacher training and
| materials is a matter of scale.
|
| the training only takes one year. the cost comes from it
| being done on top of the traditional teacher education that
| most teachers likely went through.
|
| if montessori training would be included into traditional
| teacher education, the cost would be absorbed (you could
| skip a few other redundant classes). likewise, the material
| produced at scale would be cheaper.
| sgc wrote:
| 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.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Class sizes under 20 and schools under 120 at least through
| middle school would raise a far less pathologically self-
| centered society."
|
| This is a big if. Until the 1990s, class sizes routinely
| exceeded 30 and school sizes 500 in former Czechoslovakia,
| but I wouldn't call us "pathologically self-centered
| society".
|
| As for self-centeredness, shrinking family size might be the
| true reason. Only children tend to be a lot more pampered
| than kids who were born into a family of six. In China, they
| are called "Little Emperors".
| bdangubic wrote:
| > As for self-centeredness, shrinking family size might be
| the true reason. Only children tend to be a lot more
| pampered than kids who were born into a family of six.
|
| to quote @inglor_cz - this is big if... you are arguing
| against generalization in your first paragraph and then you
| are proceeding to generalize... I am only child and my
| daughter is too and neither of us (especially me) have been
| pampered
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am an only child too. "Tend to be" is quite a soft
| claim, though, with plenty of room for exceptions.
|
| The Little Emperors phenomenon is still a thing. If a kid
| has two parents and four grandparents who have no other
| descendands, it is USUALLY on the receiving end of a lot
| more attention and resources than if there are six of
| them.
| em-bee wrote:
| _The biggest problem with public school is school size and
| class size_
|
| the montessori method can handle larger class sizes
| specifically because of the way it is designed. in other
| words, large class sized are an even better argument for why
| the montessori method should be used.
| sgc wrote:
| I have experience with Montessori, and I love the system.
| But it doesn't work for everybody. The Montessori educators
| I have known were open about the common situation where
| about 1 in 20 kids just do not learn with the lack of
| structure - they never become self-starters. In a public
| Montessori with large class sizes, there had better be a
| very clear plan of how to help those kids. We started our
| kids in Montessori and switched to Waldorf because my
| eldest really needed more structure, and my wife didn't
| want to try again.
|
| When we transitioned our charter Waldorf to a public
| Waldorf, the kids experiencing it for their first year
| absolutely thrived. I would love to see both systems expand
| significantly in the public space, and have educators with
| enough savvy to help kids find their best place.
|
| I think that even a more traditional school system can be
| totally healthy, and should stay part of the school mix. I
| have seen it work out relatively well in other countries.
| It just doesn't work when run like a for-profit prison.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| 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.
| obscurette wrote:
| 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.
| spicyusername wrote:
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| i believe some countries have a different experience. in a
| report about participating on online classes from home during
| covid in germany it was observed that kids with worse
| conditions at home were disadvantaged the most, which leads
| to the reverse conclusion that for these kids going to school
| did matter.
| bityard wrote:
| 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.
| msteffen wrote:
| 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.
| desireco42 wrote:
| 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.
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