Any alternative school system is lower-cost than public schools if they don't have to support the needs of students with severe disabilities.
Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
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Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#22Only 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.
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#23Table 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'.
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#24Any alternative school system is lower-cost than public schools if they don't have to support the needs of students with severe disabilities.
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.
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the control group was families who did opt in and who lost the lottery.
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.
Oh you mean it could all be peer group effects?
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#26Sounds 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. https://www.pnas.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1073%2... Talk of causation anywhere other than the unit of randomization is speculation.
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?
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#27I 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.
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#28Only 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.
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.
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#29I 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 th…
> 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.
Re: Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
#30Only 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.
>. 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!