Reading Achievement in Arizona Public Montessori Schools

In recent years, many state legislatures in the United States have implemented legislation and regulations requiring public schools to use evidence-based reading curricula. This study of reading achievement in public Montessori schools in Arizona was conducted to comply with one such piece of legislation. It compares public Montessori students’ standardized state reading test scores to those of traditional public school students statewide. Through descriptive statistics and t-tests on aggregate measures, as well as simple regression, we demonstrate that students receiving Montessori reading instruction perform as well as or better than the comparison group in absolute terms. The longer students remain in the Montessori setting, the better they perform. This is also true for special education students, whose reading test scores after three or more years in a public Montessori program were indistinguishable from the general population. These results suggest Montessori instruction works as well or better than other reading curricula in use throughout the state to produce favorable results on Arizona’s reading assessment, with noteworthy outcomes for students receiving special education services.