Lee Montessori open slots for 1st and 2nd

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori students gain valuable skills learning how to be independent and take care of themselves at an early age. The fine motor skills that are practiced in Montessori help the students with handwriting (they learn cursive starting in PK3).

So they can write "I am failing math" in cursive?

Anyone who thinks that knows nothing about how the Montessori math curriculum works. It’s incredible and Montessori kids end up several grade levels ahead of their traditional school peers with an excellent foundation in math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with PPs. I have a child that loves reading and pushes herself naturally in reading and writing. That's great and one less thing I have to worry about. But that same child could not care less about math and avoids it like the plague. We pulled her out of Montessori because I was not willing to wait and see if/when her math interest caught up to her reading interest. Particularly not for a girl, where the math divide between genders starts showing by middle elementary. I think Montessori can be amazing for a self-motivated child that can move faster than a traditional curriculum allows. But you simply don't know if you'll have that child when you lottery for your 3 or 4 year old. Or if your second child will be the same self-motivator. It's HARD to know when it's time to make a change, and to leave a "lottery win" seat behind. But sometimes it's the right decision and all you can do is move forward.

We moved from a supposed HRCS early in ECE for these reasons--it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be for child nor our family.

How is the new school? Let me guess…you still think is not hard enough?

I meant the adjustment wasn’t as hard as we expected it to be. The change was hard the first 1-2 weeks of school, but then it was fine. Now academically, it’s much harder.

We had the opposite experience leaving Montessori for a popular public school. Their Montessori education meant they were way ahead of grade level. This isn’t clear when you are in Montessori because there are few tests or comparisons. For example, PPs experience with their K student working on multiplication is not unusual. I’ve seen Lee first and second graders working on complex long multiplication and division.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know if Lee's test scores went up this year? Too lazy to look them up myself.

Yes, they went up a bit.

"Compared to 2019, 5% more students are scoring 4 or 5 on Math, while nearly 10% more are scoring 4 or 5 on ELA. 32% of all students scored proficient on Math while 36% scored proficient in ELA."

They were one of a handful of schools that improved post-pandemic. Chill out anti-charter warrior. Talk to some Upper Elementary parents.

Omg. So a modest improvement, which is good, be ut still 2/3 of the kids at Lee are below grade level. Wow.

Uh, isnt that true of the city as a whole? City wide is 31 percent proficient in ELA, 19 percent proficient in math.

¨In spring 2019, the last time students took the exam, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level. Now, 31 percent meet that standard. The share of students who passed the math exam fell 12 percentage points, from 31 percent before the pandemic to 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in the city.¨

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/02/dc-schools-parcc-test/

Lee's scores are similar to our IB Title 1 school, where 99% of students are FARMS and there is a very high percentage of students with housing insecurity, an at-risk designation, or an IEP. Our IB is actually a phenomenal school but it's working with a population of students that have lots of needs outside of academics so it is unsurprising that scores remain low despite their excellent efforts.

With Lee the lower scores tend to get blamed on a different pace for learning at a Montessori school but given their population (high-SES with a much smaller population of FARMS kids, minimal IEPs, few if any housing insecure kids), it is still strange that less than 50% of the kids tested are at or above grade level. Sure, some of the non-Montessori schools testing higher might be "teaching to the test" in a way that gives them an edge. But not a 30-40% edge. Lee's PARCC scores are concerning.

A lot of these title 1 schools are also teaching to the test…so I think is best if people stop focusing so much on PARCC scores.

It's one thing to base all decisions on PARCC (that's a mistake) but it's another thing to ignore them altogether. PARCC is deeply flawed and no one loves the emphasis on standardized testing (seriously, no one does!) but you can't ignore the link between PARCC scores and, say, literacy or math proficiency. They aren't unrelated. Title 1 schools teach to the test because they are really working to teach kids the material. It's not a cynical ploy to lift their PARCC scores and attract high-SES IB families. They are genuinely just working really hard to teach the kids and PARCC is an annoying but useful tool for seeing how they are doing.

Standardized testing is flawed but there isn't really another good way of checking to see how effective a school is, on average, at educating kids. You can make qualitative assessment and you can look at how an individual child is doing without these tests, but that doesn't give you a good picture of the schools' standard effectiveness. And yes, that means that Lee's PARCC scores raise questions for current and prospective families. If it doesn't raise an issue for you, I presume it's because your own child is not on the bubble in this respect and you don't worry overly much about the schools effectiveness. That' a position of privilege.

All of this. Look, I'm no devotee of standardized testing, especially the PARCC. But you cannot look at Lee's scores, where 21 out of 80 PARCC-takers scored a 1 in Math, and say that everything's fine here. If a school had a lot of 3s, maybe that's ok for a Montessori if you're really into Montessori. But with 21 scoring a 1 and 16 scoring a 2, that's 37 out of 80 kids who are *significantly* below grade level in math. ELA is a little better, but again, out of 80 PARCC-takers, 18 scored a 2 and some unknown number scored a 1. That's about 25% of the kids scoring a 1 or a 2 in ELA. Those are concerning test scores. They're not just a little bit bad. They're quite bad. Similarly disappointing is that hardly anyone scored a 5 in either subject.

For context, a 1 in 3rd grade means that children cannot order numbers between 1 and 100 in the correct order. A 1 is not about failing to teach to the test, especially if you're talking about a UMC kid. ALSO a Lee parent in this thread said Lee did PARRC tutoring! So they *did* teach to the test and 25% of their test takers could not order numbers from 1 to 100 in 3rd grade. That is horrifying.

The tutoring is so that the kids know how to use the computers and understand how to use the test. They don’t use computers in the classroom and half the kids have never used a mouse and most can’t type. If you can’t type you do poorly on PARCC. It’s not a test that accurately gauges academics in Montessori, so no, most elementary parents look at other measures to see if their child is faring well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori students gain valuable skills learning how to be independent and take care of themselves at an early age. The fine motor skills that are practiced in Montessori help the students with handwriting (they learn cursive starting in PK3).

So they can write "I am failing math" in cursive?

Anyone who thinks that knows nothing about how the Montessori math curriculum works. It’s incredible and Montessori kids end up several grade levels ahead of their traditional school peers with an excellent foundation in math.

Except at Lee where most 3rd-5th graders are working below grade level in math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, formerly lazy poster here. You guys got me curious and now am home with a beer. Below some OSSE numbers from the link above.

Lee numbers are very similar to Breakthrough. Interesting, though, looks like LAMB does a better job getting those 1s and 4s up.

Columns:
Grade - performance level - Count - Total Count - Percent

Breakthrough scores:
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 1 16 64 25.00
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 2 13 64 20.31
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 3 16 64 25.00
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 4 14 64 21.88
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 5 5 64 7.81

Lee scores:
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 1 21 80 26.25
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 2 16 80 20.00
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 3 17 80 21.25
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 4 22 80 27.50
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 5 4 80 5.00

LAMB scores:
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 1 11 136 8.09
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 2 32 136 23.53
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 3 34 136 25.00
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 4 51 136 37.50
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 5 8 136 5.88

Adding Capitol Hill Montessori scores:
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 1 42 151 27.81
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 2 42 151 27.81
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 3 41 151 27.15
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 4 23 151 15.23
Grades 3-8 Performance Level 5 3 151 1.99

Proficient means 4 and 5, right? So proficiency levels in math are:

Capitol Hill - 17.22%
Shining Stars - 19.44%
Breakthrough - 29.69%
Lee - 32.5%
LAMB - 43.38%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know if Lee's test scores went up this year? Too lazy to look them up myself.

Yes, they went up a bit.

"Compared to 2019, 5% more students are scoring 4 or 5 on Math, while nearly 10% more are scoring 4 or 5 on ELA. 32% of all students scored proficient on Math while 36% scored proficient in ELA."

They were one of a handful of schools that improved post-pandemic. Chill out anti-charter warrior. Talk to some Upper Elementary parents.

Omg. So a modest improvement, which is good, be ut still 2/3 of the kids at Lee are below grade level. Wow.

Uh, isnt that true of the city as a whole? City wide is 31 percent proficient in ELA, 19 percent proficient in math.

¨In spring 2019, the last time students took the exam, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level. Now, 31 percent meet that standard. The share of students who passed the math exam fell 12 percentage points, from 31 percent before the pandemic to 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in the city.¨

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/02/dc-schools-parcc-test/

Lee's scores are similar to our IB Title 1 school, where 99% of students are FARMS and there is a very high percentage of students with housing insecurity, an at-risk designation, or an IEP. Our IB is actually a phenomenal school but it's working with a population of students that have lots of needs outside of academics so it is unsurprising that scores remain low despite their excellent efforts.

With Lee the lower scores tend to get blamed on a different pace for learning at a Montessori school but given their population (high-SES with a much smaller population of FARMS kids, minimal IEPs, few if any housing insecure kids), it is still strange that less than 50% of the kids tested are at or above grade level. Sure, some of the non-Montessori schools testing higher might be "teaching to the test" in a way that gives them an edge. But not a 30-40% edge. Lee's PARCC scores are concerning.

A lot of these title 1 schools are also teaching to the test…so I think is best if people stop focusing so much on PARCC scores.

It's one thing to base all decisions on PARCC (that's a mistake) but it's another thing to ignore them altogether. PARCC is deeply flawed and no one loves the emphasis on standardized testing (seriously, no one does!) but you can't ignore the link between PARCC scores and, say, literacy or math proficiency. They aren't unrelated. Title 1 schools teach to the test because they are really working to teach kids the material. It's not a cynical ploy to lift their PARCC scores and attract high-SES IB families. They are genuinely just working really hard to teach the kids and PARCC is an annoying but useful tool for seeing how they are doing.

Standardized testing is flawed but there isn't really another good way of checking to see how effective a school is, on average, at educating kids. You can make qualitative assessment and you can look at how an individual child is doing without these tests, but that doesn't give you a good picture of the schools' standard effectiveness. And yes, that means that Lee's PARCC scores raise questions for current and prospective families. If it doesn't raise an issue for you, I presume it's because your own child is not on the bubble in this respect and you don't worry overly much about the schools effectiveness. That' a position of privilege.

All of this. Look, I'm no devotee of standardized testing, especially the PARCC. But you cannot look at Lee's scores, where 21 out of 80 PARCC-takers scored a 1 in Math, and say that everything's fine here. If a school had a lot of 3s, maybe that's ok for a Montessori if you're really into Montessori. But with 21 scoring a 1 and 16 scoring a 2, that's 37 out of 80 kids who are *significantly* below grade level in math. ELA is a little better, but again, out of 80 PARCC-takers, 18 scored a 2 and some unknown number scored a 1. That's about 25% of the kids scoring a 1 or a 2 in ELA. Those are concerning test scores. They're not just a little bit bad. They're quite bad. Similarly disappointing is that hardly anyone scored a 5 in either subject.

For context, a 1 in 3rd grade means that children cannot order numbers between 1 and 100 in the correct order. A 1 is not about failing to teach to the test, especially if you're talking about a UMC kid. ALSO a Lee parent in this thread said Lee did PARRC tutoring! So they *did* teach to the test and 25% of their test takers could not order numbers from 1 to 100 in 3rd grade. That is horrifying.

The tutoring is so that the kids know how to use the computers and understand how to use the test. They don’t use computers in the classroom and half the kids have never used a mouse and most can’t type. If you can’t type you do poorly on PARCC. It’s not a test that accurately gauges academics in Montessori, so no, most elementary parents look at other measures to see if their child is faring well.

Oh please. Most people don't make their household computer-free and the kids get experience at home. Lee did give computer skill practice, you are saying, and yet still most kids are below grade level.

Even someone with poor computer skills should not score a ONE if they know the material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori students gain valuable skills learning how to be independent and take care of themselves at an early age. The fine motor skills that are practiced in Montessori help the students with handwriting (they learn cursive starting in PK3).

So they can write "I am failing math" in cursive?

Anyone who thinks that knows nothing about how the Montessori math curriculum works. It’s incredible and Montessori kids end up several grade levels ahead of their traditional school peers with an excellent foundation in math.

Except at Lee where most 3rd-5th graders are working below grade level in math.

+1. When do thes amazing gains begin to show? Certainly not at CHML, which goes through 8th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know if Lee's test scores went up this year? Too lazy to look them up myself.

Yes, they went up a bit.

"Compared to 2019, 5% more students are scoring 4 or 5 on Math, while nearly 10% more are scoring 4 or 5 on ELA. 32% of all students scored proficient on Math while 36% scored proficient in ELA."

They were one of a handful of schools that improved post-pandemic. Chill out anti-charter warrior. Talk to some Upper Elementary parents.

Omg. So a modest improvement, which is good, be ut still 2/3 of the kids at Lee are below grade level. Wow.

Uh, isnt that true of the city as a whole? City wide is 31 percent proficient in ELA, 19 percent proficient in math.

¨In spring 2019, the last time students took the exam, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level. Now, 31 percent meet that standard. The share of students who passed the math exam fell 12 percentage points, from 31 percent before the pandemic to 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in the city.¨

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/02/dc-schools-parcc-test/

Lee's scores are similar to our IB Title 1 school, where 99% of students are FARMS and there is a very high percentage of students with housing insecurity, an at-risk designation, or an IEP. Our IB is actually a phenomenal school but it's working with a population of students that have lots of needs outside of academics so it is unsurprising that scores remain low despite their excellent efforts.

With Lee the lower scores tend to get blamed on a different pace for learning at a Montessori school but given their population (high-SES with a much smaller population of FARMS kids, minimal IEPs, few if any housing insecure kids), it is still strange that less than 50% of the kids tested are at or above grade level. Sure, some of the non-Montessori schools testing higher might be "teaching to the test" in a way that gives them an edge. But not a 30-40% edge. Lee's PARCC scores are concerning.

A lot of these title 1 schools are also teaching to the test…so I think is best if people stop focusing so much on PARCC scores.

I think that’s breathtakingly unfair to the teachers and students of some of these Title 1 schools. I understand that Lee boosters are surprised to be going through their waitlist so quickly, but as some other schools improve academically, there might be less demand at Lee. And for a school as equity-focused as Lee, this should be a good thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know if Lee's test scores went up this year? Too lazy to look them up myself.

Yes, they went up a bit.

"Compared to 2019, 5% more students are scoring 4 or 5 on Math, while nearly 10% more are scoring 4 or 5 on ELA. 32% of all students scored proficient on Math while 36% scored proficient in ELA."

They were one of a handful of schools that improved post-pandemic. Chill out anti-charter warrior. Talk to some Upper Elementary parents.

Omg. So a modest improvement, which is good, be ut still 2/3 of the kids at Lee are below grade level. Wow.

Uh, isnt that true of the city as a whole? City wide is 31 percent proficient in ELA, 19 percent proficient in math.

¨In spring 2019, the last time students took the exam, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level. Now, 31 percent meet that standard. The share of students who passed the math exam fell 12 percentage points, from 31 percent before the pandemic to 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in the city.¨

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/02/dc-schools-parcc-test/

Lee's scores are similar to our IB Title 1 school, where 99% of students are FARMS and there is a very high percentage of students with housing insecurity, an at-risk designation, or an IEP. Our IB is actually a phenomenal school but it's working with a population of students that have lots of needs outside of academics so it is unsurprising that scores remain low despite their excellent efforts.

With Lee the lower scores tend to get blamed on a different pace for learning at a Montessori school but given their population (high-SES with a much smaller population of FARMS kids, minimal IEPs, few if any housing insecure kids), it is still strange that less than 50% of the kids tested are at or above grade level. Sure, some of the non-Montessori schools testing higher might be "teaching to the test" in a way that gives them an edge. But not a 30-40% edge. Lee's PARCC scores are concerning.

A lot of these title 1 schools are also teaching to the test…so I think is best if people stop focusing so much on PARCC scores.

I think that’s breathtakingly unfair to the teachers and students of some of these Title 1 schools. I understand that Lee boosters are surprised to be going through their waitlist so quickly, but as some other schools improve academically, there might be less demand at Lee. And for a school as equity-focused as Lee, this should be a good thing.

What is Lee's plan to reduce its massive achievement gap?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know if Lee's test scores went up this year? Too lazy to look them up myself.

Yes, they went up a bit.

"Compared to 2019, 5% more students are scoring 4 or 5 on Math, while nearly 10% more are scoring 4 or 5 on ELA. 32% of all students scored proficient on Math while 36% scored proficient in ELA."

They were one of a handful of schools that improved post-pandemic. Chill out anti-charter warrior. Talk to some Upper Elementary parents.

Omg. So a modest improvement, which is good, be ut still 2/3 of the kids at Lee are below grade level. Wow.

Uh, isnt that true of the city as a whole? City wide is 31 percent proficient in ELA, 19 percent proficient in math.

¨In spring 2019, the last time students took the exam, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level. Now, 31 percent meet that standard. The share of students who passed the math exam fell 12 percentage points, from 31 percent before the pandemic to 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in the city.¨

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/02/dc-schools-parcc-test/

Lee's scores are similar to our IB Title 1 school, where 99% of students are FARMS and there is a very high percentage of students with housing insecurity, an at-risk designation, or an IEP. Our IB is actually a phenomenal school but it's working with a population of students that have lots of needs outside of academics so it is unsurprising that scores remain low despite their excellent efforts.

With Lee the lower scores tend to get blamed on a different pace for learning at a Montessori school but given their population (high-SES with a much smaller population of FARMS kids, minimal IEPs, few if any housing insecure kids), it is still strange that less than 50% of the kids tested are at or above grade level. Sure, some of the non-Montessori schools testing higher might be "teaching to the test" in a way that gives them an edge. But not a 30-40% edge. Lee's PARCC scores are concerning.

A lot of these title 1 schools are also teaching to the test…so I think is best if people stop focusing so much on PARCC scores.

I think that’s breathtakingly unfair to the teachers and students of some of these Title 1 schools. I understand that Lee boosters are surprised to be going through their waitlist so quickly, but as some other schools improve academically, there might be less demand at Lee. And for a school as equity-focused as Lee, this should be a good thing.

What is Lee's plan to reduce its massive achievement gap?

They don’t have a plan because they are still in denial. They are convinced that low scores are purely the fault of flaws in the test and the peculiarities of Montessori education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori students gain valuable skills learning how to be independent and take care of themselves at an early age. The fine motor skills that are practiced in Montessori help the students with handwriting (they learn cursive starting in PK3).

So they can write "I am failing math" in cursive?

Anyone who thinks that knows nothing about how the Montessori math curriculum works. It’s incredible and Montessori kids end up several grade levels ahead of their traditional school peers with an excellent foundation in math.

Except at Lee where most 3rd-5th graders are working below grade level in math.

That certainly depends on how you measure it. If you go into the classroom and see those kids working on long division, algebra and how to determine area for their entire classroom you won’t think they are behind. If you look at the test scores for a school that is anti testing, sure you can conclude that. The depth of knowledge there can not be measured by PARRC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know if Lee's test scores went up this year? Too lazy to look them up myself.

Yes, they went up a bit.

"Compared to 2019, 5% more students are scoring 4 or 5 on Math, while nearly 10% more are scoring 4 or 5 on ELA. 32% of all students scored proficient on Math while 36% scored proficient in ELA."

They were one of a handful of schools that improved post-pandemic. Chill out anti-charter warrior. Talk to some Upper Elementary parents.

Omg. So a modest improvement, which is good, be ut still 2/3 of the kids at Lee are below grade level. Wow.

Uh, isnt that true of the city as a whole? City wide is 31 percent proficient in ELA, 19 percent proficient in math.

¨In spring 2019, the last time students took the exam, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level. Now, 31 percent meet that standard. The share of students who passed the math exam fell 12 percentage points, from 31 percent before the pandemic to 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in the city.¨

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/02/dc-schools-parcc-test/

Lee's scores are similar to our IB Title 1 school, where 99% of students are FARMS and there is a very high percentage of students with housing insecurity, an at-risk designation, or an IEP. Our IB is actually a phenomenal school but it's working with a population of students that have lots of needs outside of academics so it is unsurprising that scores remain low despite their excellent efforts.

With Lee the lower scores tend to get blamed on a different pace for learning at a Montessori school but given their population (high-SES with a much smaller population of FARMS kids, minimal IEPs, few if any housing insecure kids), it is still strange that less than 50% of the kids tested are at or above grade level. Sure, some of the non-Montessori schools testing higher might be "teaching to the test" in a way that gives them an edge. But not a 30-40% edge. Lee's PARCC scores are concerning.

A lot of these title 1 schools are also teaching to the test…so I think is best if people stop focusing so much on PARCC scores.

It's one thing to base all decisions on PARCC (that's a mistake) but it's another thing to ignore them altogether. PARCC is deeply flawed and no one loves the emphasis on standardized testing (seriously, no one does!) but you can't ignore the link between PARCC scores and, say, literacy or math proficiency. They aren't unrelated. Title 1 schools teach to the test because they are really working to teach kids the material. It's not a cynical ploy to lift their PARCC scores and attract high-SES IB families. They are genuinely just working really hard to teach the kids and PARCC is an annoying but useful tool for seeing how they are doing.

Standardized testing is flawed but there isn't really another good way of checking to see how effective a school is, on average, at educating kids. You can make qualitative assessment and you can look at how an individual child is doing without these tests, but that doesn't give you a good picture of the schools' standard effectiveness. And yes, that means that Lee's PARCC scores raise questions for current and prospective families. If it doesn't raise an issue for you, I presume it's because your own child is not on the bubble in this respect and you don't worry overly much about the schools effectiveness. That' a position of privilege.

All of this. Look, I'm no devotee of standardized testing, especially the PARCC. But you cannot look at Lee's scores, where 21 out of 80 PARCC-takers scored a 1 in Math, and say that everything's fine here. If a school had a lot of 3s, maybe that's ok for a Montessori if you're really into Montessori. But with 21 scoring a 1 and 16 scoring a 2, that's 37 out of 80 kids who are *significantly* below grade level in math. ELA is a little better, but again, out of 80 PARCC-takers, 18 scored a 2 and some unknown number scored a 1. That's about 25% of the kids scoring a 1 or a 2 in ELA. Those are concerning test scores. They're not just a little bit bad. They're quite bad. Similarly disappointing is that hardly anyone scored a 5 in either subject.

For context, a 1 in 3rd grade means that children cannot order numbers between 1 and 100 in the correct order. A 1 is not about failing to teach to the test, especially if you're talking about a UMC kid. ALSO a Lee parent in this thread said Lee did PARRC tutoring! So they *did* teach to the test and 25% of their test takers could not order numbers from 1 to 100 in 3rd grade. That is horrifying.

The tutoring is so that the kids know how to use the computers and understand how to use the test. They don’t use computers in the classroom and half the kids have never used a mouse and most can’t type. If you can’t type you do poorly on PARCC. It’s not a test that accurately gauges academics in Montessori, so no, most elementary parents look at other measures to see if their child is faring well.

Oh please. Most people don't make their household computer-free and the kids get experience at home. Lee did give computer skill practice, you are saying, and yet still most kids are below grade level.

Even someone with poor computer skills should not score a ONE if they know the material.

They did, but my experience was that most kids could not type. Many families at Lee try their best to keep Montessori at home too which means limited computers. I’m not saying that the typing lessons were effective. They were not.

[Anonymous]

The white kids at Lee will be fine, don’t “worry” so much about them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori students gain valuable skills learning how to be independent and take care of themselves at an early age. The fine motor skills that are practiced in Montessori help the students with handwriting (they learn cursive starting in PK3).

So they can write "I am failing math" in cursive?

Anyone who thinks that knows nothing about how the Montessori math curriculum works. It’s incredible and Montessori kids end up several grade levels ahead of their traditional school peers with an excellent foundation in math.

Except at Lee where most 3rd-5th graders are working below grade level in math.

That certainly depends on how you measure it. If you go into the classroom and see those kids working on long division, algebra and how to determine area for their entire classroom you won’t think they are behind. If you look at the test scores for a school that is anti testing, sure you can conclude that. The depth of knowledge there can not be measured by PARRC.

Oh please. "Depth of knowledge" but still scoring a ONE on the PARCC? Come on. Even allowing for lack of computer skills and unfamiliarity with the style of math, people with even a little bit of knowledge should be able to get a 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori students gain valuable skills learning how to be independent and take care of themselves at an early age. The fine motor skills that are practiced in Montessori help the students with handwriting (they learn cursive starting in PK3).

So they can write "I am failing math" in cursive?

Anyone who thinks that knows nothing about how the Montessori math curriculum works. It’s incredible and Montessori kids end up several grade levels ahead of their traditional school peers with an excellent foundation in math.

Except at Lee where most 3rd-5th graders are working below grade level in math.

That certainly depends on how you measure it. If you go into the classroom and see those kids working on long division, algebra and how to determine area for their entire classroom you won’t think they are behind. If you look at the test scores for a school that is anti testing, sure you can conclude that. The depth of knowledge there can not be measured by PARRC.

What if you see 4-5 children doing advanced math and other children doing almost no math at all? Without a way to measure what kids are learning (if you have to just disregard PARCC because you don’t think it’s a good measure), how do you know how the school does on this point on average. Most schools have outlier kids who are working above grade level. But as a prospective parent, you might want to know how the school does with kids who are average or below average. Even if your child is advanced in some areas, most kids have areas where they struggle.

You are asking parents to take it on faith that their child will get the education they need, based purely on belief in Montessori methods. If that’s the expectation, it’s unsurprising that the school loses many families after ECE because even among people who like Montessori, it is hard to just assume it will all work out for your child specifically. My guess is that these fears were compounded this year by several well-liked teachers leaving the school. It leaves a lot of unknowns.

I’m not a fan of PARCC but I’m at a loss for what to do with a school that doesn’t believe in any form of standardized assessment. High SES families might do okay there but this is sketchy for MC and poor kids who are not guaranteed the same level of resources and support in the future. And I’m not sure that public funds should be going to a school that doesn’t serve low-Income kids well and doesn’t believe they need to be assessed on the same metrics as other public schools.