According to the College Board - CB_StateTuitionFees - a college student attending a 4-yr public university will spend $12,715 in annual tuition. That's 29% less than annual tuition at a local, NJ Montessori program for a toddler ($17,932). Uhhhhhhhh..... WHAT!?!?!?!
Montessori (and private school in general) is NOT worth the
price of admission – that’s my current thinking. To back it up we are
sending my 2 year old to a traditional preschool come Fall.
Until a few years ago I had never heard of Montessori (even
now I need spell check to get it right) but for the past few months this
“freedom within limits” approach which respects a child’s inherent disposition
plagues me. Although my wife and I debate our socioeconomic status, it’s less
a question of affordability and more one of - is Montessori worth it?
Montessori has merit…
- Child-led decisions from a range of activity options
- “Discovery” based learning (vs traditional teacher led)
- Spontaneous development in a prepared Montessori environment (i.e. kids follow their innate desire to develop)
- Mixed age classrooms (3-6 yrs old)
Admittedly the
Montessori method is appealing to me
intellectually. But how do you gauge its effectiveness. Will my son not read,
write or count as well if he goes to a traditional preschool? Will he perform
worse in primary/secondary school? Have fewer professional opportunities? Ok,
maybe I am exaggerating the long-term consequences but multiple sources point
to most learning/development occurring by the age of 5 so who knows?
I am not aware of any data “proving” that Montessori
translates into any tangible benefits. If anything, I believe Montessori
suffers heavily from confirmation bias – the propensity for people to seek information
that confirms/supports their belief. In other words I believe you’ll find
brilliant kids derived from a traditional school system and struggling ones who
were spawned from other approaches, including Montessori.
…but at a cost - Montessori is >3-fold more costly than traditional preschool
My wife has evaluated a few preschool options in our NJ
community. What would you pay per year for a 3 year old to go to preschool for
2 or 3 half-days (~3 hrs/day)? $2,000? $4,000? Well if you go Montessori you’ll
pay about >$5,000/yr. The traditional preschool my son will attend will set
us back nearly $1,700 annually.
Below are the annual tuition fees for two Montessori
programs in NJ and the traditional preschool we plan to send our son –
complements of my very diligent wife!
Like expensive
things? Going private from preschool through college will cost you nearly $700,0000
- Two years of preschool ($10k/yr) = $20,000
- Kindergarten through 12th grade ($20k/yr annually adjusted by 2% annual inflation) = $315,000
- 4-year private college tuition (c2030)=$350,000
So that is a Grand total
of $685,000 for the privilege of a private education. Compare this to
the expected $100,000 tally for a 4-year public (in state) college tuition and
one would hope that a privately educated student makes more money out of
college. After all, shouldn’t that incremental $585,000 be worth something?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statics the median weekly
earnings for a college (BS degree) grad is about $1066. Let’s call that
$57,500/yr.
Using 2% inflation for the next 20 years suggests median
salaries will be almost $90,000/yr when my now 2 year old son graduates from
college. Sources vary widely on the earning potential of privately vs publicly
educated students so let’s look at this from another angle:
You would need 60 years to recover the incremental $585k spent on a private
schools assuming you make $10,000/yr more than your public school counterpart
(it would take significantly more time if you considered income taxes).
The table below illustrates payback periods at different
annual income differentials:
In other words you can work for 20 years before you break
even with your public school counterpart assuming you can make $30,000 more
than she can. Good luck!
The Bottom Line
My son will attend a traditional, public preschool this fall
– I plan to put the “savings” into a 529b (college savings account similar to a
401k). It’s not that I think traditional schooling is great. In fact I think it
is largely inadequate for preparing people for life after school. However, I
find it difficult to justify the cost of tuition for Montessori for a 3-year
old child and can think of many ways outside of preschool to allow my son to
flourish.
Admittedly my thoughts are often governed by a cynical,
left-brained, and frugal personality which helps make me uniquely me. Moreover,
as you might have guessed, I am largely
a “prodigy” of the public school system. That said, my son already benefits
from at least 5-6 hrs/wk of activities
(music class, sports class, Gymboree, play group(s), swimming lessons) and my
wife and I do our best to provide a healthy, stable and safe environment at
home. I hope that is enough!
Nice Blog Ed. Very thorough.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to share a differing perspective on the subject, with the understanding that, like your taste in Scotch, I certainly respect your decision. At the end of the day, there’s no known perfect recipe of education, socialization, family life, etc., that will create a successful person. As you said, regardless of the method, we all learn to read, write and count, so your guess is as good as mine as to which method most impacts the best long term results.
As you know, we are products of a traditional public school education as well and agree with you that the traditional public system does little to prepare students for life after primary school. That being said, your comments made me consider the value I feel we get from sending our son to Montessori. First, I can spell it now without having to look it up, because I get the bills annually and they are forever burned into my memory. Really though, for Amber and I, we know the value of a public education system as noted above, but see Montessori as an unknown, though, one that has few negative comparisons to traditional learning, aside from the cost.
So what I asked myself while reading your blog, was, "Do I feel like our children will be better academically prepared long term as a result of attending Montessori during the preschool years?" Like you, I don't know. I do feel that our Montessori places a higher focus on academic concentration earlier than most preschools, not all, and provide a deeper fundamental understanding of post pre-school complex concepts. Taking from my own experiences, I recall that mathematics where never a strong subject for me and I believe it was due to very little validation that I had fully grasped the fundamentals. I obviously passed and have overcome this, but I believe my educational experience would have been far better without the anxiety and limitations created by this gap in knowledge. My CFO receives higher compensation than me and while I can’t say that finance would have been interesting to me regardless, the reality is that I never considered it as a career, because mathematics limited my interest in related subjects. Taking this to a Montessori vs traditional education comparison, consider this (taken from another website and our own current Montessori experience).
You learn in high school that:
(a+b+c)^3 = 6abc + 3a^2b + 3 a^2c + 3b^2a + 3b^c + 3c^2b+3c^2a
In Montessori starting around age 4 Lucas began working the Trinomial cube. Admittedly, I had no idea what it was before he demonstrated its use. Interestingly, this tool or work, allows him to learn the fundamentals of how portions work, without teaching the equations themselves. He'll learn the actual equations later in traditional middle and high school, but the idea is to subject him to the fundamental concepts early so that they aren't completely foreign later on. Should this cost >$120k? Probably not. Is it worth that amount? Certainly not to everyone, but I’ll explain further why chose to spend it and even triple down on it with our twins.
Keep reading in next thread
Thanks Terry for your reply. Much appreciated! I completely agree that Montessori has few, if any, apparent detriments. I'd be a huge supporter, in fact, of overhauling our school systems to make it more Montessori-like. I just don't want to take on the costs - at least not now.
DeleteI understand the value of learning the fundamentals - the fact that this isn't don't via traditional schooling (at least not in my day) is my biggest criticism. I myself probably memorized my way through 95% of everything (college and MBA included) and figured stuff out later. I guess I'd prefer foregoing the Trinomial cube altogether and whether it is age 4 or 16 using "math" as a way to teach finance. Nearly everyone will have some form of debt in their lives (student loans, mortgage, car loans, etc) and most people are incredibly uniformed. While I am admittedly sensitive to this given all the media b.s. about Wall Street bankers are crooks and constantly screwing Main Street, I do think people have choices and make very poor decisions in life because they are not willing and/or prepared to spend time understanding finance.
You've laid out a fairly compelling rationale for the program and I am largely in agreement. What I find funny are the comments, not made on this blog but elsewhere which seems to reinforce the notion of confirmation bias that I referenced in the original blog. Thanks again for the thoughts. We've made the decision for 2014 but we will of course revisit this every single year it applies!
Whoops wait, this is getting long and Amber’s pulling me away to the gym, so I'll just summarize.
ReplyDeleteI agree that in terms of long term value, I don't know if anything learned in Montessori will affect what comes later, as I haven't done it myself. I have however, attended traditional education and like you, found it lacking in preparation for post-school activities and since I haven't found much arguing that Montessori actively slows or reduces education, as I see it, there's the devil you know, which we both admit, doesn’t get it done and devil you don't, which might or might not give an edge, or make the later schooling experience better for having been taught to learn a different way. I know that traditional school is unlikely to adequately prepare our children for later in life, so aside from the cost, I only potential upside in having my children in Montessori, with the worst case, being that I spent a fortune putting them there with no return. For me, that’s not a bet I would normally take, but the cost for the potential reward was enough for use to make a go of it.
One last thought, for every successful person who went through a Montessori program or a traditional program, there are 10’s to 100’s if not more who went through the exact same program who became unsuccessful. I know you agree, that education takes you only so far, the rest comes with all of the intangibles we as parents provide, family, constructive learning environment, good friends, etc.
Sorry one last comment.
Regarding your numbers, from our knowledge of Montessori, many children, including ours, are likely to only spend preschool-Kindergarten (years 1.5-6.5) at Montessori and then move on to private or magnate/Vanguard programs that use a traditional learning technique. So this changes the long term costs.
Lastly, are you nuts on that private college tuition? You and I both have half Asian kids. We should at least get half of college paid for through scholarship!
Have a good weekend, I’m off to go running.
Agree with just about everything with the obvious exception that I am willing to "risk" not sending my boy to Montessori at age 3.
DeleteSeriously - if they weren't half Asian they would be getting a full ride! ;)
Mine would get a full ride to the greatest University in the US... North Texas, baby!
DeleteI'm with Ed; I don't believe the ROI is there to justify the exponential increase in cost. I think there are too many variables from age 2 to 22 that could render the effects of half a million dollars’ worth of education obsolete, particularly in the later years. I hope that we eventually go to the voucher system where everyone gets a choice. Competition makes everything better, including education. Public schools should not get to keep the immunity idol forever.
ReplyDeleteHave a good weekend; I’m off to eat dessert.
Thanks Khai. Lots of feedback (obviously most too scared to comment on the blog for all to see) but appreciate the support. Very much agree that there are so many factors influencing the future it is difficult to place too much emphasis on any one thing. I think nearly all would agree though that the traditional school approach could use a bit of a makeover.
DeleteThat said, having a child has a way of changing things. I look forward to your new addition and watching you cater and cave to her every need!