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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Struggling with this is exactly why I never quite finished my degree. All the papers where I had to choose what to write about, without having an immediate topic I just had to write about, never even got started. Thesis is an even bigger project. Dropping out and not having to do it anymore felt like a relief.
you may be comparing different countries. not needing to be able to do all of this sounds like a very school like university. the universities i know are not like that, and you most certainly need those skills.
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 clientèle 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.
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.
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.
