New findings from the University of Virginia show children who attended public Montessori preschool demonstrated better reading ability, executive function, short-term memory and social understanding in kindergarten than children who did not have an early Montessori education.
And in an unexpected discovery, a cost analysis in the study also suggests three years of public Montessori preschool, from ages 3 through 5, costs schools $13,000 less per child than traditional preschool programs. This is largely due to Montessori’s intentional use of larger child-to-teacher ratios at younger ages. The cost analysis accounted for teacher training and the cost of special Montessori materials.
UVA Commonwealth Professor of Psychology Angeline Lillard is the lead author of the new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most widely cited scientific journals. (Photo by Tom Cogill)
UVA Commonwealth Professor of Psychology Angeline Lillard led the study - funded by Arnold Ventures, the Brady Education Foundation and the Institutes for Education Sciences - with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and the American Institutes of Research. Beginning in the fall of 2021, researchers collected data on 588 children aged 3 through kindergarten. About 240 won a lottery to attend prekindergarten in one of 24 public Montessori schools across the United States. The children performed similarly when they were 3 and 4 years old, but differences favoring the Montessori group emerged at the end of kindergarten.
The findings – independently reviewed by outside experts – contrast with earlier research, which often showed strong preschool effects right after the program, but found those gains faded by the end of kindergarten. Preliminary evidence also suggests Montessori effects were stronger among lower-income children and boys.
“Given the findings that Montessori costs less, that lower-income children were especially impacted, and that other studies have found both higher teacher job satisfaction and higher school enjoyment among students, the Montessori model starts to seem particularly compelling,” Lillard said.
“That is not to say that the conventional model is ineffective – it has served its purpose for much of humanity for over a century. And hard-working, well-intentioned teachers are to be treasured – there is no task more noble, to my mind, than helping young people, in the best ways we know how,” Lillard said. “But there is a growing and compelling case for considering this alternative model.”
