The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  Copyright © 2006 by Duck Island Productions, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: September 2006

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-6852-5

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE:

  Kid on Spec

  INTRODUCTION:

  How Do You Get In?

  CHAPTER ONE:

  The $500,000 Question

  CHAPTER TWO:

  Meet the Parents

  CHAPTER THREE:

  Front of the Brochure

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  A Thick Folder, a Thin Applicant

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  So Many Fabulous Families

  CHAPTER SIX:

  Failing at Four

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  All About Me, Sweetheart

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  Decision

  CHAPTER NINE:

  The Second Season

  EPILOGUE:

  Teacups and Crispies

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To B. J. K. and Z.

  Always

  PROLOGUE

  Kid on Spec

  The following story, like all of the stories in this book, is true:

  Gracie Graham, fifty-three, director of the prestigious Bright Stars Nursery School, sat in her office with Monica Keane, thirty-one, a prospective parent uniformed in pale Donna Karan and enough Tiffany to open her own store. For the first forty minutes of their visit, Gracie had taken Monica on a tour of the preschool, formerly a cheerless basement in a Methodist church, now a cluster of rooms bathed in soft colors, a mauve, an azure, a tapioca, teeming with thirty darling, exuberant children of many shapes and cultures. Years ago, in the early stages of Bright Stars, Gracie, then a young teacher fresh out of college, helped name these classrooms after insects preceded by inviting adjectives: the Busy Bees, the Giddy Grasshoppers, the Lucky Lightning Bugs.

  Today the children were up to their elbows in cake batter, absorbed in a cooking project. Looming over them, cheering them on, lending a hand, were two aging hippie women, quiet talkers, known only by their first names, which coincidentally matched the seasons. Monica could barely contain her excitement, letting slip an involuntary “Ohhh” at the sight of an adorable mop-haired Busy Bee smearing frosting over the top of a layer cake, her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration.

  Within moments of meeting her, Gracie could tell that Monica was a woman with questions, questions that indicated more than a casual interest in Bright Stars, and judging by the cash value of the jewelry strewn along her left forearm alone, a prospective parent of means. Not that this was a ticket in. Not by a long shot. But it was, let’s face it, a good place to start.

  Monica had also done her homework. Sitting across from Gracie in her office, she glanced at her BlackBerry and asked, “Would you describe Bright Stars as progressive or academic?”

  Academic preschool, Gracie thought. Talk about an oxymoron. When did it come to this?

  “I’d say we were developmentally appropriate,” Gracie said, the words rolling out of her mouth, packaged, as if she were running for political office. “Of course, these days with parents enrolling their kids in pre-preschool, drilling their kids with flash cards, trying to force them to read at age two, I’m not sure where we’re going anymore.”

  “I completely agree,” Monica said. She pinpricked her BlackBerry. “What’s your policy on TV? Do the children watch DVDs in the classroom?”

  “Not as a rule. On occasion, for example when it rains, we’ll put on Blue’s Clues, something like that. Or after lunch we might pop in Winnie the Pooh while the children are closing their eyes, gearing up for the afternoon.”

  “I can certainly relate to that,” Monica said.

  The women nodded and smiled. Monica slid her BlackBerry into her purse and leaned forward. It was at that point that they each dropped the pretense and began what could actually be called a conversation. At dinner that night Gracie would relate to friends that there was even a sense of connection. It seemed real at the time. Honest. True. Then, after spending close to an hour with Monica Keane, a woman who had to be considered a strong Bright Stars candidate, Gracie said, “So, tell me about your child.”

  “Oh,” Monica said, “I don’t have a child.”

  Gracie’s smile remained frozen on her face. “Are you . . . pregnant?”

  “No,” Monica said, “but we’re thinking of trying soon.”

  “Then . . . what are you doing here?” The words trickled out in a stunned monotone.

  “It’s so hard to get into a top-tier kindergarten in this city. I wanted to get a head start.”

  “Uh-huh,” Gracie said. She realized now that her lips had clamped into a tight thin line. She said nothing more. She assumed, at this point, that Monica would take her silence as a cue, pack up her Prada purse, and leave.

  But Monica leaned even farther forward in her chair and said in a whisper, “Gracie, between us, how do we get in?”

  Gracie abruptly stood up.

  “You can start by having a kid,” she said.

  INTRODUCTION

  How Do You Get In?

  How do you get in?

  Not only is this the question that parents pose endlessly during the process of applying to private school kindergarten, it is the engine that drives the process itself. As the father of two children in private school and a trustee on the school’s board of directors, I became fascinated by the question. Once my tenure as a trustee came to an end, I saw that fewer and fewer kindergarten spots were available. A spot in our school’s kindergarten had become a coveted prize. I began to realize that getting in and getting an education were vastly different processes. I started to hear stories—funny stories, crazy stories, horror stories—of desperate parents doing anything to gain a space in kindergarten.

  As I thought about these stories and read what people were doing to get into private school kindergarten in every city in the country, as well as in Japan, Spain, and other countries, I became even more intrigued. Then I got hooked. I left the board and began researching this book.

  Early on I decided to remove my former school from the story. The director of admissions and the head of school remain dear friends. I am indebted to them. I would not have been able to write this book without their guidance. When I got lost, they pointed me in the right direction; when I needed an introduction, they made a call. But they do not appear in the book and the school is not depicted.

  Writing and researching The Kindergarten Wars consumed more than two years of my life. I followed families who applied to private schools in various cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. With only slight variations, the process itself and the parents’ angst that accompanied it were strikingly similar in all of the cities. The exception was New York, which, as in most things, stood out as if in its own orbit. This is partly due to its long tradition of private school education dating back to the formation of the very first private school in the United States, Collegiate, founded in 1628. It’s also partly due to the nature of New Yorkers themselves, Manhattanites mostly—prideful, competitive, independent, and insistent on attaining what they perceive to be the best. In addition, applicants to almost all private school kindergartens in New York are required to take the ERB, an IQ-type test administered one-on-one to preschoolers by a professional examiner. V
irtually every other private school in the country evaluates prospective kindergartners to some degree, but only the New York private schools require a formal scored and written evaluation as a precondition for entrance.

  At the completion of my research, I decided to concentrate on four families, focusing on four moms. I found that in general moms took the lead in the application process. The exceptions were three dads, one in Nashville, one in Boston, and one in Detroit. These dads told me that they took charge of the process for the same two reasons: they knew prominent people at the schools they applied to and they were unabashed game players.

  As well as knowing several people whose children attended the school he coveted for his son, the Boston dad is an accomplished amateur photographer. He volunteered to document school assemblies, the All-School Holiday Program, and the fifth grade graduation ceremony, for free.

  “I have no doubt that my presence at the school was the reason my son got in,” he said.

  The other two dads leaned heavily on relationships. The Detroit dad concentrated on one particular school because a college fraternity brother was on the board of directors. His child got in. The Nashville dad was told that getting into private school was “all about letters of recommendation.” His friends urged him to submit two strong letters from two very significant people, people his friends helped him solicit.

  “The letters were the only factors that made our application stand out,” he said. “It was clear I wasn’t going to be contributing big money.”

  It worked. A top-tier private school accepted his daughter.

  For the most part, though, it was all about the moms. They scouted the schools, attended the open houses, toured the campuses, and winnowed their choices to the ones that reflected their educational philosophies and lifestyles. They were the ones who filled out the applications (at least the first drafts) and drove their kids to their school visits. The dads often took a backseat, joining their wives for tours of only the most serious contenders and, of course, participating in the parent interview. In some cases, dads emerged from the background to attempt to close the deal.

  The four moms I followed represent a cross section of typical soldiers in the kindergarten wars. All four of the moms attended college; two have advanced degrees. Lauren is a stay-at-home mom and a woman of means due to her husband’s lucrative business. Trina is a single mom of ethnic diversity, struggling to make a go of her career. Shea is a New York mom who works part-time, her husband providing the bulk of their income.

  The fourth mom, Katie, is as close to a “regular” mom as anyone could be. Financially, she and her husband fall solidly into what we once called the middle class. Her husband works long hours and brings home a good salary. Katie has put her career on hold temporarily in order to devote herself to her kids. She entered the private school application process reluctantly, after much research and soul-searching. She admits now that she was naïve, unprepared for the culture shock that rudely slapped her across the face.

  All of the moms gave me the gift of total cooperation and generosity. I became their shadow, accompanying them on school visits, open houses, and tours. When it was impossible for me to observe a part of the process firsthand, they would phone me immediately afterward and re-create what they had experienced moments before, down to the dialogue that had been spoken. Katie in particular and perhaps uniquely is a copious note taker, habitually scribbling paragraphs of thoughts, impressions, descriptions, and emotions into the notebook she always carries in her purse. She would willingly describe her moods and emotions, even when they came out in a whirlwind of extremes. Katie pulled no punches. She bared her soul. This book became her de facto diary, her private school confessional.

  A final note about my families.

  I felt confident that I would have no trouble finding people who would be willing to share the application process with me, as long as they weren’t identified by name. I was wrong. Although many parents were intrigued by the prospect of appearing in a book on this subject, more than a dozen turned me down. Most offered apologies. One mom provided an explanation:

  “I don’t want anyone to know where I didn’t get in. Or, God forbid, that I didn’t get in at all.”

  My goal in The Kindergarten Wars is to show all sides of the application process. In addition to following parents, I was determined to follow admissions directors and school heads to see what the process was like from their perspective. From my previous experience and from what friends in the “business” told me, I assumed I would experience dozens of doors slammed in my face.

  To my great surprise, many admissions directors and school heads were eager to speak to me. They were open, frank, and generous with their time. Several allowed me access to their inner sanctums, offering me glimpses into the nuts and bolts of their admissions process, access that I doubt had ever before been granted to an outsider. It was as if I had offered them the opportunity to set the record straight. I was pleased to give them a forum to express themselves and to show prospective parents for the first time what really goes on behind the scenes.

  Some school officials refused to talk to me. Others agreed to be interviewed but managed to avoid saying anything substantial in the course of our hour together. They suddenly became a version of a presidential press secretary glibly appearing to answer questions when in fact they were dodging and weaving, ducking behind evasive language or deftly veering off the subject. If I persisted, they employed more direct tactics. When I asked one admissions director, “Why did you choose this particular child?” she stopped taking my calls. Previously, she had been my most forthcoming and available school contact. Now she had ceased to exist, as if she’d been swept away into a witness protection program.

  The most dramatic and bizarre moment of my research occurred one cold and rainy morning when I interviewed the director of a preschool. When the interview began, I sensed reluctance, even regret that she had agreed to see me. I dismissed this, chalking it up to the presence of my tape recorder. The interview proceeded smoothly, pleasantly, until I asked this question:

  “I hear repeatedly that directors of admission rely heavily on their relationships with preschool directors. Is that true?”

  “Turn the tape recorder off right now,” the preschool director said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Now.”

  I was so thrown by the violence of her response that I reflexively reached over and snapped off the recorder. She shifted abruptly in her chair. I thought for certain that she was about to ask me to leave.

  In the process of researching five books and countless magazine articles involving thousands of hours of conversations, including interviewing someone with ties to the Mob, nobody had ever asked me to stop the tape recorder. Now I had the distinct feeling that I was about to be kicked out of a preschool. Clearly, I had hit a nerve. I knew then that this subject was far more sensitive and explosive than I imagined.

  I wanted to erase this blemish on my record. I apologized and promised I would keep my questions more general and less probing. She agreed to finish the interview. I turned the tape recorder back on and we ran through some generic questions about her preschool program. She revealed nothing useful for the book but at least I wasn’t tossed out into the rain in front of a dozen finger-painting three-year-olds.

  Ultimately, though, other admissions directors and school heads revealed more about the admissions process than I would ever have imagined. There was only one condition. I could not use their names or the names of their schools. One school head requested that I change her gender and move the location of her school to another city to protect her identity.

  I not only agreed, I decided ultimately to set the book in an anonymous American city. Except for the sections in New York, The Kindergarten Wars might take place in any of a dozen cities across the country from Boston to San Francisco, Dallas to Detroit. Since I discovered that the private school application process is more or less universal, and to protect
every person’s and every school’s identity, the city where the narratives take place is never named.

  I have used real names only a few times in the book, such as in the cases of Pastor Sweetie Williams, his son Eliezer, Manasa Tangalin, and Emily Glickman, a New York educational consultant who requested that I use her name. In every other instance, I changed their names, created composites, and invented personality traits. The result is that the schools and people are real but camouflaged by my imagination. What I didn’t change were conversations. The dialogue in the following pages comes from tapes I recorded or as a result of conversations I witnessed, heard, or was told about firsthand.

  At its core The Kindergarten Wars is the story of a quest. The prize our four families seek is as elusive as a cloud. To complicate matters, they are in competition with scores of other seekers, many accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it, and damn the cost. The term that describes these people is entitled—the “E word,” one director of admissions calls it. When the powers protecting the prize withhold it from even the entitled, the result is a deep and pervasive societal anxiety, edging to communal frustration, bubbling toward rage. In her novel Admissions, Nancy Lieberman calls the private school application process in Manhattan a “blood sport.” Taking this image to a Faustian level, Judith Warner in her book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety writes, “We are convinced that every decision we make, every detail we control, is incredibly important,” adding, “Parents prostitute their souls for spots in private schools.”

  Before I began researching this book, I believed this was an exaggeration and that these parents were exceptions. There are so many choices, I thought, so many schools: charter schools, magnet schools, specialized schools within schools, parochial schools. Indeed, many of the educators I interviewed across the country promoted these and other public school alternatives.

  To begin with, though, exclusivity sells. The more exclusive the prize, the more we want it. The head of a relatively low-key private school said to me jokingly, “Just once I want to start out the application process by saying, ‘Sorry. We have no spots available at all this year. We are completely full. I am not taking any applications. You cannot get into this school,’ just to see what would happen. My theory is that the more exclusive you are the more people want you.”