Can Montessori Integrity Survive NCLB?

By Dennis Schapiro

A decade ago politicians arguing that our public schools have failed and that the quality of schools can be measured by the number of children achieving a passing score on a standardized test won the policy debate.

A cynic might suggest that the most telling proof of the failure of American public education is that it has produced a Congress and a public that could accept so preposterous an idea.

But No Child Left Behind is law and shapes public education more each year-even as resistance slowly builds.

In 250 public programs across the country, Montessori teachers continue to work tirelessly to give children the educational experiences they deserve. Many wonderful programs endure. But there is little doubt public Montessori programs are being profoundly, and often negatively, affected by the law.

• As pressure builds to have more students scoring at or above state-set minimums, urban districts increasingly rely on a single district-wide curriculum aligned to state tests. Montessori programs are rarely exempted from district-mandated test performance curriculum and strategies.
• With state-created standards always focusing on grade level expectations, Montessori classrooms focus on what third, fourth or fifth graders are tested on. Even when traditional 3-6, 6-9 and 9-12 classrooms configurations survive-and that is far from the norm-direct instruction is increasingly geared to specific grades.
• Parents with resources and generous visions of what the education of young people can be will not accept what some urban public schools offer-even if the name "Montessori" is hypocritically embossed on the signage. That means the core of stable families that make Montessori classrooms most effective might not be a given at public Montessori magnets. With more mobile student populations, the argument becomes stronger for a standardized approach that will provide greater consistency for the child who will sit in three schools this year.
• As Montessori teachers reach the limits of their conscience for compromising what they consider the best interests of their students, many become cynical or move on.
• As school districts struggle with strategies to reconstitute schools stigmatized for failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress for several years, the example of Ft. Wayne, IN, may foreshadow a different effect. The district leadership there, faced with closing a "failing" middle school, voted to reopen it next year as an additional Montessori site. Whatever the quality of the site-and Ft. Wayne has an excellent reputation for doing Montessori well-the reconstitution restarts the clock for NCLB sanctions.
• As the requirements of NCLB drive many discriminating parents from urban systems, enrollments decline and financial pressures mount. Many urban districts face staff reductions. Because no state has recognized a Montessori credential as a protected license comparable to music, art, special education or traditional K-6 preparation, Montessori programs are uniquely vulnerable. In at least two districts-Cincinnati and Minneapolis-when staff reductions were made, union contracts required that less senior Montessori-trained educators be laid off and more senior teachers, with no Montessori experience, be placed in their classrooms.
• The moral leaders of the Montessori community-the teacher educators and the associations-remain deafeningly quiet about the threats to quality.

From the founding of America's first public Montessori schools 30 years ago, skeptics have argued that public school systems are toxic to Montessori integrity.

Defenders, myself included, have suggested that there is much to be learned, and many children to be helped, by acknowledging that education is political. The struggle is worth it.

The narrowing focus on test scores in urban public systems is a call for all of us to revisit the skeptics' cautions.

We will continue to do so in these pages, but I urge you to discuss the issues with colleagues, parents and others and, if you conclude the changes are not healthy for children, stand up for what you believe. Work with others to find ways to build public policy that honors children.