Montessori schools look to future

In Philomena Thomas’ class at Meher Montessori School in Monterey Park, children sprawl on the floor putting together wooden puzzle maps, or help one another with art, or sit reading. For a roomful of children under age 6, the noise level is remarkably muted.

In the Montessori approach -- unlike the regimented setting in most schools -- a classroom of free-roaming children, unfettered by the teacher’s intervention, is the perfect learning environment.

But that philosophy has been both a draw and a challenge for Montessori education, which is marking the centennial of its founding by looking back on its achievements while moving to more sharply focus its future.

Leaders in the method want to tap into parents’ disenchantment with traditional public schools to establish Montessori as the dominant alternative.

To that end, Montessori educators, traditionally a fairly laid-back lot, are marshaling more sophisticated marketing tools and attempting to better distinguish authentic, accredited Montessori schools from those that misuse the name.

More than 5,000 schools in the United States, most of them private, use Montessori methods, characterized by multi-age classrooms, self-paced study, specially designed materials and the absence of most tests and letter grades. Montessori schools have opened at a rapid pace in California in recent years and now number nearly 800, officials said.

The methods are being used in a growing number of public schools, currently more than 300 in districts from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. But only about 20% of so-called Montessori schools have been accredited by the Assn. Montessori Internationale or the American Montessori Society. The AMI -- based in Amsterdam -- strictly promotes the methods of its founder, Italian physician Maria Montessori, while the AMS has adopted a less rigid approach.

Montessori educators acknowledge that much of the public has at best a vague understanding of their method. Misconceptions -- for example, that the schools are glorified day-care programs or just for the wealthy -- persist in part because Montessori never copyrighted her name or method. Many so-called Montessori schools don’t employ the methods or undergo the training that adherents consider vital.

Although some schools exploit the Montessori name, others simply don’t want to go through the expense or trouble of accreditation, said AMI-USA Executive Director Virginia McHugh. Her group plans to reach out to those schools to try to coax them to apply for full accreditation.

“We want to be really proactive,” said McHugh, noting that there is only one AMI-accredited school in Los Angeles County. “I can probably find many schools in Los Angeles that purport to be Montessori, and we want to call them and ask them if they are aware of our school recognition program. Accreditation is like a Good Housekeeping symbol.”

Other Montessori leaders are mounting an effort to finally trademark Montessori methods under the rubric of Montessori Centers of Excellence.

To achieve that, schools would have to meet several criteria, including teacher certification. Trademark status is expected by the end of May, said Michael Jacobson, chairman of the Montessori Initiative, a national campaign to increase understanding of Montessori education.

“At least parents will know what to expect because there will be consistent standards,” Jacobson said. “We can’t do anything about the common use of the word Montessori, but we can avoid the misuse of the word.”

The American Montessori Society saw a 7% increase in member schools last year and heightened interest from school administrators and parents, perhaps denoting a backlash against the tightly controlled, test-centered precepts of the federal No Child Left Behind law, some officials said.

A study published recently in the journal Science found that Montessori-educated children have better social and academic skills than children schooled in more traditional settings. Comparing mostly urban minority children in Milwaukee who won a lottery to attend a Montessori school with a control group sent to non-Montessori schools, the study concluded that at the end of elementary school, the Montessori children “wrote more creative essays with more complex sentence structures, selected more positive responses to social dilemmas and reported feeling more of a sense of community at their school.”

Montessori alumni are a diverse set, including Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and rapper and clothing executive Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Maria Montessori, the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome’s medical program, developed her theories while working with special-needs children and then opened her first Casa Dei Bambini or Children’s House in 1907 in a Rome slum.

Using light-filled classrooms with low shelves and imaginative materials mostly made of wood, she believed that children should learn from the environment and from one another, with individualized guidance from the teacher.

In 1915, Montessori set up a glass-walled classroom at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where spectators observed 21 children who attended for four months. The exhibit won two gold medals, and the movement took off in the United States, championed by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, among others.

The traditions have been passed down at the Meher school, where at a table, a boy cuts a green apple that he will share with the class, in the process mastering physical and math skills. One girl helps another write her name on a drawing. There is also an emphasis on outdoor activities: The 9- to 12-year-olds at Meher, for instance, do recycling projects, visit nature centers and raise money for such groups as the Wildlife WayStation.

The children work on activities until they master them, said school Director Adela Munoz, in a process that happens over time and through observance, rather than a test or paper that tells you the child is ready to move to the next level.

Evita Chavez, 14, became more confident during her years at Meher, where she began at age 3, said her mother, Elodia Chavez.

“They teach the children to challenge themselves, to have inquisitive minds. Her teachers now tell me they appreciate the way she can think outside the box,” said Chavez, who also sent her son, now 10, to the school.

With an annual tuition of $7,250, Meher, which also has a school in Altadena, is the only AMI-accredited school in Los Angeles County, and all of its head teachers have AMI diplomas -- earned after a year of training -- in addition to undergraduate degrees.

The expense associated with accreditation and training, as well as up to $25,000 to equip a classroom with specially made materials, can be a problem for public schools seeking to join the movement.

The Minneapolis public school district has three magnet elementary Montessori schools with about 1,340 students, but cost-cutting and apprehension among some educators has made it difficult to follow key principals, said Bernadeia Johnson, the chief academic officer for the district.

The Antelope Valley Desert Montessori school, a K-8 charter campus in Lancaster, opened in August as one of the newest publicly funded Montessori schools in California, but it is feeling intense growing pains, said one of its founders, Jill Barrett. The full Montessori method is being implemented only in kindergarten and first grade so far. It has been difficult to find trained teachers, and only one aide has Montessori credentials. The school is a member of the Assn. Montessori Internationale but is not accredited.

Because it is publicly funded, the school has fewer resources to buy authorized materials and must work within the state-adopted curriculum and use standardized tests.

“We know we’re building on Montessori and that this is a very early stage,” said the school’s program coordinator, Dennis Corley, whose granddaughter attends.

The program has attracted 180 students. Families have been drawn to classes that average about 18 students with such activities as creative writing, golf, martial arts, swimming, choir and dance, plus regular field trips.

Infiniti Dirden, a 14-year-old eighth-grader, said there is a noticeable difference from the charter school she attended last year.

“We get more attention than last year, and that’s neat,” she said. “The teachers are more patient.... My classmates are more respectful.... We’re also helping the littler kids and bringing them along with what we’re learning.”

carla.rivera@latimes.com