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Public Montessori schools on the rise across South Carolina


Last updated February 26, 2018

By Tina Underwood

For states looking to adopt the Montessori model for public schools, they need look no further than South Carolina. Having adopted the approach early on, South Carolina now has more public Montessori schools than any other state in the nation, surpassing California. That was not the case when the Riley Institute at Furman University first published a landmark study on the 100-year-old teaching convention. The Post and Courier covered the research, which shows South Carolina Montessori students outperform students from similar backgrounds than their traditional school counterparts in English, math and social studies—although results were mixed for science and writing. The study aims in part to debunk the idea that Montessori is an “elite approach to education for privileged students, primarily available in the private sector.”

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