Reply to 1st–5th at LAMB

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a teacher who has had LAMB students transfer to my school throughout the years.  They have all come below grade level. Most of the parents are extremely confused because for years they have been told their child was performing on grade level/doing well.  That is not the case when they are in a regular classroom with standard learning.  It’s been very eye opening for the parents.  Many of the children lack foundational skills and struggle.  I’d be very careful in the upper grades and would consider a tutor/outside educational opportunities if my child attended. [/quote]

100%. I'm a teacher who has seen many kids transfer from Montessori schools and this is exactly my experience as well. A lot of them specifically seem to struggle with writing tasks. [/quote]

I was the one who originally responded with the 1st- and 3rd-grader.

I don't doubt your experience at all. But I think one of the genuinely hard things about LAMB, or any Montessori school, is teasing apart how much of a child appearing "below grade level" is the school lacking academic rigor, versus the kids simply learning fundamentally different things than what a traditional classroom teaches.

There's a lot of data suggesting that Montessori kids (even from the most academically rigorous Montessori schools) struggle in their first year transitioning to a traditional classroom. That can look like being below grade level while they catch up on content and memorization they didn't get in Montessori. But the data equally shows these kids catch up extremely quickly, and in math and science often surpass their peers, because the conceptual thinking and learning skills Montessori builds in early elementary can look like falling behind when really they're just learning different things, supplemented with content later.

So the real question is that what's happening at LAMB? My honest read is that two things are true at once.
1. It's a Montessori school, and the kids are learning different things. Plenty of them are doing just fine academically and might have a rocky transition to a new school, but that's because they've been spending their energy on different skills, which is the point of Montessori.

2. and this is the part the 100%, ride-or-die LAMB parents won't say — I also don't think LAMB is especially academically rigorous. Some of that is the bilingual model and some of it is that they genuinely pride themselves on not being a high-pressure environment, which can mean kids don't feel the academic pressure you might expect. I'm truly not sure exactly where the line is.

So even though I really do love LAMB, I'm not overly defending LAMB's academics here. As I've said, I haven't found it especially rigorous either. But there's real nuance in what "on grade level" even means, because the definition depends entirely on the curriculum you're measuring against. If what you want as a parent is to check the box of progress against a curriculum that looks like the one you grew up with, LAMB might not be the right fit.

Again: For us, the pros have majorly outweighed the cons. We recognize LAMB is giving our kids a ton right now that they wouldn't get at a traditional public elementary and at this point in their childhood, that matters more to us than an overly academic environment. I do think that needs to shift by 5th grade, which is why a lot of parents supplement heavily that year.

Then by middle school DCI is quite rigorous and the kids catch up, event though it may take a year to get there, and that's okay.

So the question is really not whether LAMB is a good school or not, but whether LAMB is the right school for you and your family. Because really the pros are magical and unlike anything I've seen at other schools - and the cons are ones that a lot of people feel are solveable.

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