Montessori Magnet Schools Suggest Reforms in Math, Science

By Peter West

OXON HILL, MD.--Sprawled on the floor around multi-colored mats in this otherwise conventional classroom, two children collecting materials suddenly turn their gaze to a rabbit that is loping slowly across the floor.

Several feet away, meanwhile, some children are handling strings of beads, brightly painted wooden sticks, and geometric forms, as others solve complicated arithmetic problems on the floor mats.

If the setting here at the Flintstone Elementary School seems out of the ordinary, it is because it is the home of a Montessori magnet program, one of three in the Prince George's...