Lee Montessori open slots for 1st and 2nd

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a current parent at Lee, with a kid in the open grades, I can confirm the academics are lacking. The teachers are nice but the majority of parents I talk to all have tutors for math and/or reading. Yes, some of the problems with reading can be attributed to COVID but not all. The school even had tutoring for the kids last year taking the PARCC. The community is great but if you’re looking for academics this isn’t the place. I wish I had done more research and I think if the school put as much effort into the academics as they do restorative justice (which they don’t even do properly) you would see a big improvement. But they don’t because they are coasting on the decent ECE and the fact that it’s a nice campus with an involved parent community.

Wow, this is alarming. For 1st and 2nd graders?!

Not sure about reading but most of the parents I know with kids in Montessori (Lee, CHMS, and LAMB) do Kumon or Mathnasium at those ages. It may just be a function of SES and personality (these are parents who I think would be likely to supplement even if their kids were in a non-Montessori environment), but it's definitely true. I would bet they are also doing some form of phonics and reading supplementing, not sure if it's tutors or what, but I'm sure it's something.

I have no idea if this is any different than what you'd see among parents at some of the higher SES DCPS and non-Montessori charters. Probably? I don't know. I'm always surprised by how much supplementing there is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a current parent at Lee, with a kid in the open grades, I can confirm the academics are lacking. The teachers are nice but the majority of parents I talk to all have tutors for math and/or reading. Yes, some of the problems with reading can be attributed to COVID but not all. The school even had tutoring for the kids last year taking the PARCC. The community is great but if you’re looking for academics this isn’t the place. I wish I had done more research and I think if the school put as much effort into the academics as they do restorative justice (which they don’t even do properly) you would see a big improvement. But they don’t because they are coasting on the decent ECE and the fact that it’s a nice campus with an involved parent community.

Wow, this is alarming. For 1st and 2nd graders?!

Not sure about reading but most of the parents I know with kids in Montessori (Lee, CHMS, and LAMB) do Kumon or Mathnasium at those ages. It may just be a function of SES and personality (these are parents who I think would be likely to supplement even if their kids were in a non-Montessori environment), but it's definitely true. I would bet they are also doing some form of phonics and reading supplementing, not sure if it's tutors or what, but I'm sure it's something.

I have no idea if this is any different than what you'd see among parents at some of the higher SES DCPS and non-Montessori charters. Probably? I don't know. I'm always surprised by how much supplementing there is.

I'm an ITDS parent and it seems to me supplementing (especially supplementing because your kid is behind) is not that common. Definitely not the norm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My eldest is in K at Lee and is working on precursory skills for multiplication after having already done addition and subtraction. The parents who complain about "lack" of academics likely don't understand how the Montessori method works, and probably would feel more comfortable at a school that drills their kids to do well on standardized tests. I just don't see that as a priority.

That's unusual for any kindergartener, it's possible your kid is simply naturally gifted at math and this has nothing to do with his school. Most kids do not start doing multiplication in K, whether Montessori or no.

It's not that people want their kids doing drills for standardized tests. Most parents hate that stuff. But pretty much all parents want their kids to learn to read, write, and do math at a competent level. Montessori often relies on the idea that children will naturally gravitate towards those things if they are offered in the right way, and for some kids that's true. And for some kids it's not true. It's easy to believe that your 3 yo will do well in Montessori, but once they've gotten past the pre-academic stuff, lots and lots of kids gravitate not towards academics but other things, and need more structure and focus in order to learn these basic skills.

I guarantee there are kids in your son's K class who can barely do any addition. And the question for them is whether they will get enough math this year to keep them at grade level. And the issue compounds after K because you are no longer doing foundational work but building on foundations. So if you lack sufficient phonemic awareness or have not mastered the concrete mathematical concepts, it is basically impossible for you to work on your reading comprehension or abstract math skills at grade levels.

Which is why parents often leave Lee and other Montessori programs in 1st or 2nd. It's not that they desperately crave rote memorization of standardized testing subjects. It's that their child is not performing at grade level on basic subjects and they worry that if they wait too long, the problem will compound and become harder to address. Parents with kids who LOVE math and reading and push themselves to go further in these subjects on their own don't get it and like to feel superior. But criticizing parents because they want their children to learn to read and do math is ridiculous.

Montessori is not for everyone, and it is especially not for everyone past ECE.

+1000. If I had a nickel for every ECE parent who thinks everything's great at their HRCS and the whiny complaining older-kid parents just don't understand [Montessori/immersion/their school's special sauce/whatever], I'd have enough to pay for 30 minutes of tutoring!

Look, it's hard to acknowledge that your lottery "win" isn't actually that great beyond ECE. But if your kid falls below grade level it's going to cost you in money and time to catch them up, and it can really affect their mental health. At some point you won't be a Montessori parent, or maybe you'll need them to be competent in math or reading to do some other activity. How long are you willing to wait for your child to be on grade level?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My eldest is in K at Lee and is working on precursory skills for multiplication after having already done addition and subtraction. The parents who complain about "lack" of academics likely don't understand how the Montessori method works, and probably would feel more comfortable at a school that drills their kids to do well on standardized tests. I just don't see that as a priority.

That's unusual for any kindergartener, it's possible your kid is simply naturally gifted at math and this has nothing to do with his school. Most kids do not start doing multiplication in K, whether Montessori or no.

It's not that people want their kids doing drills for standardized tests. Most parents hate that stuff. But pretty much all parents want their kids to learn to read, write, and do math at a competent level. Montessori often relies on the idea that children will naturally gravitate towards those things if they are offered in the right way, and for some kids that's true. And for some kids it's not true. It's easy to believe that your 3 yo will do well in Montessori, but once they've gotten past the pre-academic stuff, lots and lots of kids gravitate not towards academics but other things, and need more structure and focus in order to learn these basic skills.

I guarantee there are kids in your son's K class who can barely do any addition. And the question for them is whether they will get enough math this year to keep them at grade level. And the issue compounds after K because you are no longer doing foundational work but building on foundations. So if you lack sufficient phonemic awareness or have not mastered the concrete mathematical concepts, it is basically impossible for you to work on your reading comprehension or abstract math skills at grade levels.

Which is why parents often leave Lee and other Montessori programs in 1st or 2nd. It's not that they desperately crave rote memorization of standardized testing subjects. It's that their child is not performing at grade level on basic subjects and they worry that if they wait too long, the problem will compound and become harder to address. Parents with kids who LOVE math and reading and push themselves to go further in these subjects on their own don't get it and like to feel superior. But criticizing parents because they want their children to learn to read and do math is ridiculous.

Montessori is not for everyone, and it is especially not for everyone past ECE.

+1000. If I had a nickel for every ECE parent who thinks everything's great at their HRCS and the whiny complaining older-kid parents just don't understand [Montessori/immersion/their school's special sauce/whatever], I'd have enough to pay for 30 minutes of tutoring!

Look, it's hard to acknowledge that your lottery "win" isn't actually that great beyond ECE. But if your kid falls below grade level it's going to cost you in money and time to catch them up, and it can really affect their mental health. At some point you won't be a Montessori parent, or maybe you'll need them to be competent in math or reading to do some other activity. How long are you willing to wait for your child to be on grade level?

THIS. +100. I was this parent; I was proven very wrong as my child got older. By 3rd and 4th grade at my DS's former charter the outsized focus on community and social justice at the expense of foundational academics (multiplication, division, fractions) left him far behind grade level (even with expensive tutoring to support).

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is next, they don't have terrible test scores and an achievement gap like the Grand Canyon?

It's Montessori, they don't have to teach kids how to read and do math, they just instill a magic love of learning and the kids will learn these things on their own, at a time TBD.

This. We left Lee after PK3. My child learned very little academics. They could fold a mean towel and wash a window.

My kid is in 6th grade and still doesn’t know how to fold a towel, let alone wash a window. I now wish I had sent him to Lee.

+1. My high schooler sucks at folding towels. I also had two Girl Scouts who went to Montessori and they learned how to slice apples in pre-school. They were only kids who could cut veggies well on our campout (as 5th graders). These type of fine motor skills are useful. There is more to learning than reading or math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is next, they don't have terrible test scores and an achievement gap like the Grand Canyon?

It's Montessori, they don't have to teach kids how to read and do math, they just instill a magic love of learning and the kids will learn these things on their own, at a time TBD.

This. We left Lee after PK3. My child learned very little academics. They could fold a mean towel and wash a window.

My kid is in 6th grade and still doesn’t know how to fold a towel, let alone wash a window. I now wish I had sent him to Lee.

+1. My high schooler sucks at folding towels. I also had two Girl Scouts who went to Montessori and they learned how to slice apples in pre-school. They were only kids who could cut veggies well on our campout (as 5th graders). These type of fine motor skills are useful. There is more to learning than reading or math.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is next, they don't have terrible test scores and an achievement gap like the Grand Canyon?

It's Montessori, they don't have to teach kids how to read and do math, they just instill a magic love of learning and the kids will learn these things on their own, at a time TBD.

This. We left Lee after PK3. My child learned very little academics. They could fold a mean towel and wash a window.

My kid is in 6th grade and still doesn’t know how to fold a towel, let alone wash a window. I now wish I had sent him to Lee.

+1. My high schooler sucks at folding towels. I also had two Girl Scouts who went to Montessori and they learned how to slice apples in pre-school. They were only kids who could cut veggies well on our campout (as 5th graders). These type of fine motor skills are useful. There is more to learning than reading or math.

Again, the purpose of a modern public elementary school is not to train Victorian household staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is next, they don't have terrible test scores and an achievement gap like the Grand Canyon?

It's Montessori, they don't have to teach kids how to read and do math, they just instill a magic love of learning and the kids will learn these things on their own, at a time TBD.

This. We left Lee after PK3. My child learned very little academics. They could fold a mean towel and wash a window.

My kid is in 6th grade and still doesn’t know how to fold a towel, let alone wash a window. I now wish I had sent him to Lee.

+1. My high schooler sucks at folding towels. I also had two Girl Scouts who went to Montessori and they learned how to slice apples in pre-school. They were only kids who could cut veggies well on our campout (as 5th graders). These type of fine motor skills are useful. There is more to learning than reading or math.

Please tell me the sarcasm dripping from that previous post didn’t complete escape you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is next, they don't have terrible test scores and an achievement gap like the Grand Canyon?

It's Montessori, they don't have to teach kids how to read and do math, they just instill a magic love of learning and the kids will learn these things on their own, at a time TBD.

This. We left Lee after PK3. My child learned very little academics. They could fold a mean towel and wash a window.

My kid is in 6th grade and still doesn’t know how to fold a towel, let alone wash a window. I now wish I had sent him to Lee.

+1. My high schooler sucks at folding towels. I also had two Girl Scouts who went to Montessori and they learned how to slice apples in pre-school. They were only kids who could cut veggies well on our campout (as 5th graders). These type of fine motor skills are useful. There is more to learning than reading or math.

Again, the purpose of a modern public elementary school is not to train Victorian household staff.

You know where IS a great place to learn self sufficiency and basic life skills? Besides your own darn home of course? GIRL SCOUTS. I hope you taught every single one of those Juniors how to prep veggies that weekend.

Oh look, there's even a knife safety badge for them to do... https://www.gswpa.org/content/dam/girlscouts-gswpa/documents/Searchableforms/Patch%20Program/knife_safety_patch_program.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My eldest is in K at Lee and is working on precursory skills for multiplication after having already done addition and subtraction. The parents who complain about "lack" of academics likely don't understand how the Montessori method works, and probably would feel more comfortable at a school that drills their kids to do well on standardized tests. I just don't see that as a priority.

That's unusual for any kindergartener, it's possible your kid is simply naturally gifted at math and this has nothing to do with his school. Most kids do not start doing multiplication in K, whether Montessori or no.

It's not that people want their kids doing drills for standardized tests. Most parents hate that stuff. But pretty much all parents want their kids to learn to read, write, and do math at a competent level. Montessori often relies on the idea that children will naturally gravitate towards those things if they are offered in the right way, and for some kids that's true. And for some kids it's not true. It's easy to believe that your 3 yo will do well in Montessori, but once they've gotten past the pre-academic stuff, lots and lots of kids gravitate not towards academics but other things, and need more structure and focus in order to learn these basic skills.

I guarantee there are kids in your son's K class who can barely do any addition. And the question for them is whether they will get enough math this year to keep them at grade level. And the issue compounds after K because you are no longer doing foundational work but building on foundations. So if you lack sufficient phonemic awareness or have not mastered the concrete mathematical concepts, it is basically impossible for you to work on your reading comprehension or abstract math skills at grade levels.

Which is why parents often leave Lee and other Montessori programs in 1st or 2nd. It's not that they desperately crave rote memorization of standardized testing subjects. It's that their child is not performing at grade level on basic subjects and they worry that if they wait too long, the problem will compound and become harder to address. Parents with kids who LOVE math and reading and push themselves to go further in these subjects on their own don't get it and like to feel superior. But criticizing parents because they want their children to learn to read and do math is ridiculous.

Montessori is not for everyone, and it is especially not for everyone past ECE.

+1000. If I had a nickel for every ECE parent who thinks everything's great at their HRCS and the whiny complaining older-kid parents just don't understand [Montessori/immersion/their school's special sauce/whatever], I'd have enough to pay for 30 minutes of tutoring!

Look, it's hard to acknowledge that your lottery "win" isn't actually that great beyond ECE. But if your kid falls below grade level it's going to cost you in money and time to catch them up, and it can really affect their mental health. At some point you won't be a Montessori parent, or maybe you'll need them to be competent in math or reading to do some other activity. How long are you willing to wait for your child to be on grade level?

THIS. +100. I was this parent; I was proven very wrong as my child got older. By 3rd and 4th grade at my DS's former charter the outsized focus on community and social justice at the expense of foundational academics (multiplication, division, fractions) left him far behind grade level (even with expensive tutoring to support).

[phone] We were at a HRCS. At some point the outsized focus on social and emotional development seemed to be just a crutch or excuse for not supporting rigorous academics. The pandemic saved us because our school relied heavily on computer programs so our kid was able to advance, but that was in spite of, not because of, our HRCS. The irony is that the social and emotional stuff also failed because they treated 4th and 5th graders like ECE and the kids got over on all of the teachers.

FWIW I don't think this is specific to charters; I think this is par for the course in DC. We were fortunate to get out when our lottery came up roses. We sometimes sit around and ponder what we would have done had we not gotten lucky.

P.S. The term "supplementing" is gross and I really wish DCUM would stop using it. For generations parents have supported kids' learning outside the classroom without the need for yet another buzzword designed to reinforce how special and privileged they were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a current parent at Lee, with a kid in the open grades, I can confirm the academics are lacking. The teachers are nice but the majority of parents I talk to all have tutors for math and/or reading. Yes, some of the problems with reading can be attributed to COVID but not all. The school even had tutoring for the kids last year taking the PARCC. The community is great but if you’re looking for academics this isn’t the place. I wish I had done more research and I think if the school put as much effort into the academics as they do restorative justice (which they don’t even do properly) you would see a big improvement. But they don’t because they are coasting on the decent ECE and the fact that it’s a nice campus with an involved parent community.

Thank you for your candor, PP. Are you going to stay at Lee, or leave?

No we will look for other options in the coming year or 2,, including DCPS again. I’m under no that there is a perfect school, but I do expect that my kid should be on grade level. We don’t need