WSJ: The Pre-K Promise
We’re confident that our Montessori program succeeds on the important points noted in this study: enthusiasm for learning, confidence, and a strong foundation in literacy and math. And for exactly the reasons noted: we protect the instructional environment and keep it fruitful for all the children using the Montessori Method.
That’s why we recommend against after-school academic enrichment — we see the burn out from too much schooling and the wrong instructional environment.
Our observation: the successful recipe is Montessori plus unstructured play time plus family time (especially reading to your child).
From the Wall Street Journal …
Notable & Quotable: The Pre-K Promise
‘The benefits of pre-K intervention are being pushed without taking time to define what pre-K really means.’
From a Brookings Institution paper by Dale C. Farran and Mark W. Lipsey evaluating a five-year study of a Tennessee voluntary pre-K program (TNVPK):
There is some as yet poorly understood interaction between the pre-K experience and the experience the children have in subsequent grades that fails to carry forward the momentum they gained in pre-K. State programs that are not careful to protect the instructional environment for 4-year-olds may find the children burning out in the early grades from too much repetition of the same content and instructional format. Rather than building enthusiasm for learning, confidence in their abilities and a foundational understanding of literacy and math, the programs may only be teaching children how to behave in school, an enthusiasm that fades with repeated exposure. . . .
In sum, it would be shortsighted of pre-K advocates to dismiss the TNVPK study merely as an indictment of the quality of the Tennessee program. Rather the findings from this most methodologically rigorous study to date raise important questions about what is happening all over the country. The benefits of pre-K intervention are being pushed without taking time to define what pre-K really means and, worse, to determine whether what has been implemented has produced the promised outcomes.