The Children's House

The Pros: It's a good school, with an excellent staff. It is a true Montessori, which for us did a great job for our kids when they were younger. Toddler through third grade is perfect. If they stopped there, this would be a perfect school.

The Cons: It is a very costly school, with a mostly white, high income student population. We were on the lower end of the economic spectrum there and my kids reported thinking they were 'poor', and in upper el regularly being picked on by other kids, or excluded, because they didn't have the latest fashions or clothes. They do have tuition assistance available, but it isn't much.

After 3rd grade my kids got bored with the work pace, and it seemed like a lot of attention is given to the older kids, but not the younger ones. If your child is doing really well, he or she can get bored until they are one of the older kids. If they are struggling, they will continue to struggle while the teacher spends more time with the older kids.

Conflict resolution there is less than adequate too as they leave it too much to the kids in upper el. Telling a teacher that you are getting picked on by a bigger, older kid and being told to talk it out with him doesn't work if the bigger, older kid sees nothing wrong with the status quo, and knows the ropes better than the younger kid.
This may be just a failing of the Montessori method as kids get older, or a teacher philosophy issue, rather than a school failing. I'm not sure.

In summation: I'd strongly recommend toddler through 3rd grade here. It's excellent. After that, it drops off sharply, in terms of education, social control of teachers, and raises in price. So five stars 1-3, 1 star 4 and up.