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0 pointsteej15y ago0 comments

The article mentions a study that shows the direct influence of a Montessori school. The study was published in Science. You can read it here:

http://www.montessori-science.org/montessori_science_journal... (click "see article full text")

An excerpt:

    On several dimensions, children at a public inner city Montessori school 
    had superior outcomes relative to a sample of Montessori applicants who, 
    because of a random lottery, attended other schools. By the end of 
    kindergarten, the Montessori children performed better on standardized 
    tests of reading and math, engaged in more positive interaction on 
    the playground, and showed more advanced social cognition and 
    executive control.

TL;DR: Montessori kids turn out better on many measures when controlling for "bright parents".

On several dimensions, children at a public inner city Montessori school had superior outcomes relative to a sample of Montessori applicants who, because of a random lottery, attended other schools. By the end of kindergarten, the Montessori children performed better on standardized tests of reading and math, engaged in more positive interaction on the playground, and showed more advanced social cognition and executive control.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

greendestiny15y ago· 2 in thread

I understand that research into something as complicated as education can't control all variables. But I can immediately think of numerous other variables - what about the other children at the schools backgrounds? what about the level of funding the schools received? the level of training of the teachers?

I think Montessori and Steiner are far more dogmatic than sense dictates - but stay this way, despite the negatives, in order to give their system a magical quality. Determining the quality of a school is hard. So people are willing to cling to a belief because they don't know any better.

Just one example of negative; Montessori doesn't use imaginative play. It's been shown to be a great tool to give kids better concentration spans. But the writings of Montessori are against it and the dogma has to be followed.

qaexl15y ago

Wouldn't that just mean that parents would add some imaginative play with their own kids?

What do you think about this? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100311190247AA...

greendestiny15y ago

Yes most likely, believe me I think there are fantastic Montessori schools out there. I just think that they are dogmatic about these questions for the sake of dogma.

If we just looked at all schools like that study did, even with a lottery, we'd probably come to the conclusion that the stodgiest, most regressive kinds of top private schools is the way to go.

*Edit: Read the link more thoroughly. This answer is completely subjective but I can't really believe many people would agree with that characterisation of imaginative play and creativity who weren't rationalising their belief in a particular dogma. It doesn't ring true to me at all.

qq6615y ago· 2 in thread

You can't control for "bright parents." You can control for parents' income, parents' education, parents' height and weight, but you can't control for the kind of attitude towards childrearing and towards life that would cause a couple to send their kids to Montessori school.

This is why so many social science results that are "controlled" for various variables actually don't make any sense.

mkjones15y ago

Wouldn't accepting 1000 applications, and teaching Montessori-style to 500 of them and traditional-style to the other 500 pretty accurately control for all of those self-selection biases?

roel_v15y ago

Only if you put the 500 non-Montessori children in a separate school, with the same level of funding as the Montessori school. From the little that I know about these studies, at least some of the differences could be explained by the mixing of the 'control group' into an environment that is less ambitious or focused as the Montessori group.

(I walk pass 2 schools on my way to work each day - one Montessori, one not, sometimes around the time where children are dropped off by their parents. Even not knowing anything about the relative merits of the systems, I can easily tell which school I'd want to send my daughter to in a few years time; at the risk of sounding elitist, it's like standing next to the exit of an opera performance vs a soccer stadium).

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timr15y ago

Read the paper in full -- it doesn't say anything that supports the article's conclusion. It studies a small population of kids at one school, and finds a very slight average improvement on some test scores. That's it.

The Science article is fine for what it is, but it's hardly the evidence that Montessori schools produce disproportionate numbers of billionaires. Based on the data provided, you can't even rule out the possibility that the teachers at the one school in question were just better than average.

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