Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

IES Funds First Large-Scale Evaluation Study of Public Preschool Montessori

The Montessori method of education was developed over 100 years ago by Dr. Maria Montessori. This “whole child” approach centers around the theory that children are capable of initiating learning in a thoughtfully prepared environment that develops children’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive growth. Core components of Montessori education are mixed age classrooms in three-year groupings (e.g., 3-6 year olds, 6-9, 9-12, etc.), a carefully prepared environment filled with appropriate materials and lessons, student freedom to select lessons and activities each day, and daily uninterrupted 3-hour work blocks.

   

According to the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (NCMPS), there are currently over 5,000 Montessori schools in the U.S., 500 of which are public schools and over 150 of which serve public preschool and kindergarten students.  Despite its growing popularity in public preschools and Head Start schools, no large-scale evaluation of the efficacy of the Montessori model on children’s academic, social, and emotional skills has been conducted. 

This year, IES funded the first such study. A project team led by Dr. Ann-Marie Faria and Ms. Karen Manship (American Institutes for Research) and Dr. Angeline Lillard (University of Virginia) will study more than 650 children for three years, beginning with their entry at age 3 into preschool. Importantly, this study relies on individual random student assignment via lottery entry to compare preschool students who enroll in Montessori at age 3 to those who are assigned to a waitlist control group (and thus are in other settings such as public PreK, daycare, or a home setting). Data will be collected in diverse urban and suburban school districts across the country, including Houston (TX), Hartford and New Haven (CT), and Washington, DC.

Researchers will examine the impact of preschool Montessori education on children’s academic, social, and emotional skills, as well as kindergarten readiness skills. The research team will also conduct a cost effectiveness study of the public Montessori preschool model, and will examine the effect of fidelity of implementation of Montessori on student outcomes. Collectively, the findings from this study will provide valuable evidence of the efficacy of Montessori preschool education. Ultimately, the researchers plan to disseminate their findings to educators, parents, and policymakers through research briefs, infographics, blog posts, and webinars.

 

By Amanda M. Dettmer, PhD, American Psychological Association Executive Branch Science Fellow/ AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship

Photo credit: Marilyn Horan, Carroll Creek Montessori Public Charter School

    

The Month in Review: August 2015

By Liz Albro, NCER Associate Commissioner of Teaching and Learning

Good Luck to Applicants!

Application deadlines for our main NCER and NCSER competitions have come and gone this month. We accepted applications for 5 competitions on August 6th and 3 competitions on August 20th. Now it’s time for us to begin screening applications and moving them into the peer review process!

NCER Staff Were Out and About

NCER staff had the opportunity to learn from experts in several meetings during the month of August.

Liz Albro attended the CRESST Conference 2015, where she participated in a session titled: Is There a Role for Evidence in the Future of K-16 Technology? The short answer was yes! She was joined at the meeting by Russ Shilling, the Executive Director of STEM Education at the Department, researchers with expertise in educational data mining, cognitive science, learning analytics, and assessment, and developers of education technology from around the world.

On August 20, NCER convened a technical working group (TWG) meeting on Researching the Influence of School Leaders on Student Outcomes. Nine researchers and practitioners who study education leadership met with ED staff to discuss the lessons learned from research that explicitly connects school leadership to student outcomes and the challenges to conducting such research. Department staff, including NCER’s Katina Stapleton, also presented information about education leadership studies funded by the National Center for Education Research, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, and the Office of Innovation and Improvement. A meeting summary will be available soon on our TWG page.

In the final week of August, Meredith Larson, who oversees our research program on adult education, and Daphne Greenberg, the principal investigator of our National R&D Center, the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, attended the 2015 National Meeting for Adult Education State Directors hosted by the Department’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education.

Between Parents and Kids: IES-Funded Research in the News

Two publications from IES-funded research hit the national news this month … and both highlighted the critical role that parent-child interactions play in children’s learning outcomes. In one article, featured on WebMD, Paul Morgan and his colleagues reported that 2-year-old children with larger oral vocabularies demonstrated better academic achievement and behavior at kindergarten entry. The team also discussed child and family characteristics that are related to vocabulary size at age 2, which may help identify which groups of children are at risk for needing early language intervention.

In the other, discussed in the New York Times, Sian Beilock, Susan Levine, and their colleagues reported that parents’ math anxiety is related to their young children’s math achievement – and seems to emerge when math-anxious parents try to help their kids with their math homework.

We Said Farewell to Our Interns

As August ended, our summer interns went back to school. We were sad to see them go, but excited for them as the new school year begins. Think you might be interested in interning at IES? Read an interview with one of our interns, and learn how to apply to the internship program at the Department.

Questions? Comments? Please send them to IESResearch@ed.gov