Can my child stay in a Montessori school through elementary and middle school or should she transfer to a traditional school at some point?
One of the most enduring misconcep-tions about Montessori is that it is only for preschool children. The Elementary program has many wonderful gifts to offer both socially and academically. In fact, research has shown that Montessori students consistently outperform those from traditional schools in social, moral, cognitive and emotional levels throughout their entire school life. A recent study, A Comparison of Montessori and Traditional Middle School: Motivation, Quality of Experience, and Social Context, by Kevin Rathunde, had this to say about older Montessori students: “Results (of the study) showed that Montessori students reported a singularly better quality of experience in academic work than the traditional students. There were strong differences suggesting that Montessori students were feeling more active, strong, excited, happy, relaxed, sociable and proud while engaged in academic work. They were doing, and wanted to be doing academic work more than the traditional students
