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Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

phys.org

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Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#111

Post by sgc »

em-bee wrote: post #87
sgc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

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.

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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#112

Post by BeetleB »

zorked wrote: post #52
mlinhares wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#113

Post by michaelt »

didibus wrote: post #104
WillAdams wrote: post #32

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 classe…

> 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?

> 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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#114

Post by ryukoposting »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #74
ryukoposting wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#115

Post by desireco42 »

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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#116

Post by solfox »

sgc wrote: post #111
em-bee wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 a…

PLEASE do your due diligence before considering Waldorf for your kids.

I'm not saying that kids cannot have a good experience at a Waldorf school, or that all their educational ideas are bad. Just that once you children have been there for a couple of years, you learn some very disturbing truths about the organization. It's not an education institution as much as it is a religious organization - your children WILL be taught hymns about god and angels in class. The teachers will not admit to this. They will be taught from the original lessons of Steiner, who had some rather unconventional pseudo-scientific ideas (even for his day). This is coming from a dad who had his kids at Waldorf for three years, and I'm so glad I finally got them out - even with the difficult academic transition.

There is plenty of information published about their organization online, and growing awareness worldwide.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#117

Post by NedF »

WillAdams wrote: post #32

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 classe…

> and it really is a wonderful system.

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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#118

Post by em-bee »

ryukoposting wrote: post #114
paulryanrogers wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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 u…

i think the constructivist idealism got in the way here. i believe the expectation was that they wouldn't need to train the teachers because the students should figure out the laptops on their own.

seems they missed that figuring out the laptop and integrating it into the curriculum are two different things.

i read your post btw, one thing i am wondering about is that you wrote that countries didn't improve electricity in schools because OLPC claimed that this wasn't necessary.

my own speculation is that they simply didn't enough research and didn't expect that the situation would be so bad. it is also my understanding that the hand crank was dropped early because the laptop could not handle the physical stress of cranking, it would break apart. but then a separate hand crank charger was eventually produced after all: https://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/Hand_Crank but if i did the math right then it would still take an hour to charge the battery with that.

since there was no hand crank the need for electricity was already well known before any deployment, and part of the deployment efforts included improving the electricity infrastructure.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#119

Post by phkahler »

WillAdams wrote: post #32

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 classe…

>> 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.

Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study

#120

Post by RhysU »

nerdsniper wrote: post #21

Any alternative school system is lower-cost than public schools if they don't have to support the needs of students with severe disabilities.

Therefore no one should study alternatives to the public schools...?

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?

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