discussed here

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/338503.page#4207064

Our Montessori ends right before K. I would love to keep DD in the program, but we would have to either move (if we can save enough we will try to buy a place in south arlington) or pay for a year of private montessori for K. I wish it was a bigger thing and more available in public schools.

We faced this issue, and it did boil down to logistics for us. We would have loved to keep our son in his Montessori for K. The K year gives the child the opportunity to complete the cycle and be a leader in the classroom, something we thought our son (who has a summer birthday, so he would be a young Kingergartener in a traditional classroom) would benefit from greatly.

That said, we toured private schools, entered the MoCo language immersion K lottery, and visited our local elementary school. In the end, we chose a progressive K-8 private for our son, applied, and he was admitted. Our chances of getting him into the school would have been greatly reduced if we waited until 1st to apply, so we entered him at K. We would have also sent him at K had he received a slot in the MoCo language immersion lottery. Sending him to our local public was our third choice, and if the first two fell through, we would have waited until 1st grade to send him.

We are happy with our decision, but it is by no means a no-brainer. There are benefits of each path.
We did struggle with the decision, and in the end, we went with our gut.

Good luck.

Many parents were debating this question in our Montessori preschool with a 3 year program. It boiled down to logistics for many that had older children in elementary schools some distance away from the Montessori and who preferred driving their kids (or having them take the bus) together to just one school.

The school organized conferences and Q&As about the benefits of Montessori K, and some parents, particularly the ones without logistical problems, decided to stay.

I have observed both public MCPS Kindergarten and our Montessori K. Academically, there is no question at all that Montessori is much more advanced. Students at our Montessori do addition, subtraction, count to a thousand and do multiplication. They can all read by the end of K. They are socialized, polite and listen to teachers.

The public MCPS K is great for learning to deal with social issues, since the classes are large and the students come with a wide variety of social and academic experience. Some classes are so large and have students with such need that there can be no academic learning at all.
Ask other neighborhood parents to find out if the K teachers are any good. My son had an excellent one who managed to differenciate the curriculum. Unfortunately, such teachers are the exception and not the norm.

Please do a search on this and then come back with any other questions. Been asked a lot.

DD is 5 and has been in Montessori since 3. We are debating whether we should put her into a traditional kindergarten program or let her complete the last year of her Montessori Program. Has anyone else faced this issue? What were your considerations? Did you have any regrets?