The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  Shea peers at the ERB results, nods once. “So this is the narrative. ‘Liam is enthusiastic and attentive and his big smile, striking blond hair, sparkling blue eyes, and outgoing chatter marked the session.’ They have such a way with phrasing. It’s all like that. Very positive. There is an element of this that borders on the ridiculous. ‘Liam settled into the new situation readily. Rapport was established immediately. Self-assured, he moved from test to test rapidly. Liam quickly grasped the intent of each task, at times pre-empting the complete instructions. He watched the examiner’s demonstrations with the hands-on items attentively and followed through with work directly.’ It gets better.”

  And Shea reads, “‘Liam enjoyed verbal interchange both in casual conversation and in response to guided questions. Excellent command of word meanings; defined many words on a vocabulary list with precise, succinct statements. Liam rapidly assigned abstract categories to sets of word pairs, recognized the underlying commonalities in the relationships. A very fine problem solver. Listening to successive verbal clues, he used deductive reasoning skills to identify a concept. Readily changed his mind with new information. Liam has absorbed much from the world around him, offering several suggestions for practical everyday social dilemmas.’”

  Shea looks up, does a comical double take.

  “I’m like, what? He needs to do that at home. Whenever I have a dilemma and I’d like a suggestion, all I get is screaming and crying. A fine problem solver? Maybe they confused him with another kid.”

  Shea returns to the narrative, picking up the pace, reading at twice normal speed. “‘Using a conventional right-handed pencil grip, Liam copied several rows of symbols to match a code. Eager to share an anecdote, he interrupted his work using several seconds . . .’”

  Shea laughs. “Okay, now that’s him. He was probably in the middle of the test and he stopped to tell a story. He’s Mr. Anecdote.” And Shea channels Liam again: “You know this coding thing reminds me of a funny story. When we were in the rain forest one summer, our guide Gerardo—”

  She looks back at the narrative. “‘Liam responded to cajoling and returned to task.’” Shea rolls her eyes, reads: “‘With a keen eye, he could picture groups based on their common properties, getting some of the later, more subtle ones after missing some of the earlier, easy ones. Excellent spatial organizational abilities. With no wasted motions, he assembled both simple and bipolar block patterns. Kept his eye on the model and picture as he noted block positions. Persevered up to a point. Realistic when success was not in sight. Completed many matrices with a quick grasp of inherent analogies.’ That is pretty much the test. Then there are some general comments. ‘Liam had very good attention and strong stamina throughout the hour. He seemed to have fun trying his hand at each task. He moved from activity to activity with ease. It was a delight to work with Liam. His confidence and comfort in the situation contributed to a very smooth and enjoyable session. He is clearly a child with outstanding strengths in both the verbal and performance domain. Abstract thinking ability and visual motor skill are particularly noteworthy.’ So that is it.”

  Shea sighs and tosses the ERB results onto the coffee table.

  “Usually people are very tight-lipped about the test. It’s a little like asking how much money you make. It’s very personal and bad form to ask outright. What happens is, someone will say, ‘Did you get the scores back yet? How did he do? Did he do okay?’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah. He did well. We were pleased.’ Then again, I think a lot of people lie.”

  Shea breaks into her upturned smile. “I was pleased,” she says. “In fact, I owe my friend a dollar.”

  The Test

  The woman in black sits in the school’s library with six other women in black, accompanied by their sidekicks, men in black, fidgety and superior, annoyed that they’ve been forced here on a Saturday. Some of the men speak on cell phones, some read the sports section, all avoid eye contact. The women speak to each other in muted, grave voices as if dispensing classified information. They are recovering from a twenty-minute speech and fifteen-minute question-and-answer session with the head of the school, a plump, balding man in a rumpled suit. He spoke glowingly of his school, of course, through a smile that seemed snapped on, like a pair of fake plastic lips you might find in a costume store. He is a polished speaker, so polished that what he said felt too glib, too practiced. Through it all, the hype about the school, the insincere smile, the canned speech, the woman in black detected a whiff of arrogance, a dark underside to what was presented as a pure and fluffy whipped-cream cloud.

  I suppose I can’t blame him, she thinks. I mean, look at us. Seven desperate housewives, most of us, I’ll bet, graduates of top-tier colleges, some with advanced or law degrees, seated next to our moneyed, powerful husbands, while our kids are scrutinized in the next room by a team of four kindergarten teachers and one schlumpy admissions director, women of lesser intelligence, means, and prominence, but who this morning are not only our equals, they hold the key to our children’s futures. Once my kid is in, I’ll kick the shit out of them, but today I’ll kiss their asses collectively in Bloomingdale’s window if that’s what it takes. And looking around at the other thirteen rich, powerful, elite women and men in black, she thinks, So would they.

  But this Saturday morning, her son, call him Brian, holds all the cards. He is the one they’re watching. He is the one about whom they’ll raise their thumbs up or down. They have given their all in this game, left nothing to chance, made the right calls, said all the right things, winked in all the right places. The woman in black folds her hands in her lap.

  The game is now his to lose. We have bred him well. He will not fail us.

  It comes down to one simple test.

  A test designed to separate the leaders from the flock. To weed out the strong from the weak.

  “Our kindergarten is made up of tomorrow’s world leaders.”

  That is what the school head said. And that is truly what he and the woman in black believe.

  The children have been allowed five minutes of free play in the school playground, after which they’ve been promised a snack. While the three boys in their Ralph Lauren Polo shirts and khaki pants and the four girls in their Gap dresses navigate the ins and outs of the school’s play structure, a multilevel redwood thing resembling a mini A-frame in Napa, the kindergarten teachers set five chairs around a table. At the head of the table they arrange seven plates of cookies and seven juice boxes. When they’ve finished, one of the teachers tinkles a small bell and in a pleasant but insistent voice calls, “Snack time!”

  The children abandon their positions on the play structure and arrive at the table, which is set beneath a metal overhang.

  “Line up now,” the teacher says. “Single file.” The three other teachers and director of admissions watch, foreheads furrowed, clipboards at the ready, pens poised.

  The children line up, eager for a snack. One boy, the third in line, looks with concern at the number of chairs. His lips moving, his finger pointing, he calculates that there are more children than chairs.

  “Here you go.”

  The teacher hands him his cookies and juice. The little boy hesitates, sees one little girl already seated at the table, and decides then to make a sacrifice, to take one for the team. He will give his place at the table to somebody else. He will find somewhere else to sit. Holding his snack and drink in front of him, he sees a shady spot in front of a tree. The little boy sits down there, alone, and begins to munch on a cookie.

  Brian is next in line. He receives his plate of cookies and his juice box and offers a polite “Thank you” to the teacher who passes them out. He, too, observes that the table has only five chairs, two of which are now taken. And then Brian sees the little boy sitting off by himself.

  He looks kind of lonely, Brian thinks. And there’s really not enough room around the table, anyway. I’ll keep him company.

  Wordlessly, he joins the little boy in his spo
t by the tree. Silently, the two boys enjoy their snack, watching the table fill up in the distance, happy that they’ve managed to find their own spot and that they didn’t have to get anyone in trouble for not finding a seat at the table. Brian feels quite proud of himself. He could’ve grabbed his cookies and juice and slammed his butt down onto a chair, as if he were a contestant in a vicious version of musical chairs. But, no, this is school. You’re supposed to cooperate. He did a good job. He did the right thing.

  On the way home, Brian tells his parents how he sat with the other little boy under the tree, choosing not to sit at the table with the others.

  He finishes his story. Instead of praise there is silence.

  “Tell me you didn’t really do that,” his mother says, her voice trembling a little. His father stares ahead, his fingers gripping the steering wheel of the Mercedes.

  “There was no room. I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”

  “You didn’t want to cause any—” The woman in black glares at her husband. “I don’t believe this. Did you hear that?”

  “I heard.”

  The woman in black whirls around to her son, who is strapped into his car seat in the backseat. “Why did you do that? Tell me!”

  “I thought—”

  “You were supposed to sit at the table! You were supposed to be part of the group! Not sit under a tree! It was a test.”

  Brian sniffs once and starts to cry.

  “Aw, fuck,” the woman in black says. She whips her head back, faces the road ahead, unclasps her purse, and yanks out a crumpled Kleenex. She blows her nose so violently that it causes both her husband and Brian to jump.

  “Fuck,” she says again.

  Her husband says nothing. In the backseat, Brian whimpers. He doesn’t dare cry out loud.

  Two months later the woman in black will receive a letter from the school assigning Brian to the gulag known as the waitlist.

  Liam’s Visit

  The night before his visit at Longbourne, Shea Cohen gives Liam two choices of shirts to go with his khaki pants: a blue button-down oxford or a dark green turtleneck.

  “Not the turtleneck,” Liam says. “The tag itches and bothers me. I don’t like the turtleneck.”

  “That settles that,” Shea says.

  Sitting in the admissions office the next morning, Shea, Donald, and Liam watch as a boy in an apparently very itchy turtleneck comes out of MK’s office and heads over to his parents.

  “How was it?” the mom asks. “Did you have fun?”

  “Can I take this shirt off now?” the boy pleads, shoving his fingers underneath the cloth that throttles his neck.

  Shea winks at Liam and Liam covers his mouth with both hands, stifling a laugh. MK speaks to the boy’s parents for a few minutes, then disappears into the office. The boy and his family leave, lugging with them an anvil of anxiety. A moment later MK bounds out of the office and heads toward the Cohen family.

  “Okay, which one of you is Liam?”

  Liam shoots his hand into the air. “I am.”

  “You are? Are you sure?”

  Liam laughs. “I’m sure.”

  “Amazing. That was the first question I had and you knew the answer! You’re doing great! So here’s the plan. You and I are going to go into my office, right there where your mom and dad can see you, and we’re gonna have a talk. I’m going to ask you some even trickier questions like, ‘What’s your name?’ Oh. You already answered that one. Okay. ‘How old are you?’”

  Another big laugh and a look toward Shea that reads, Is this person for real? then to MK, “That’s not a tricky question. That’s an easy question.”

  “Really? I’m gonna have to think of something harder. Oh, I almost forgot. At the end of our talk, you’re going to get a prize. Something great if you answer all my questions and, okay, something great even if you don’t.”

  MK offers a hand. Liam grabs it happily and they go off, chatting away.

  “No problem with transition there,” Donald says.

  “I can see his high school yearbook now,” Shea says. “Most likely to join a cult.”

  Liam and MK are back in less than twenty minutes. Liam is holding a ball. He giggles at something MK says.

  “Look, Mom, look at this.” Liam bounces the ball. The inside lights up.

  “Wow. Very cool.”

  “Well, Liam, I certainly had a good time,” MK says. “Did you?”

  “Yep.”

  “It was delightful meeting you.”

  MK extends a hand. Liam takes it. MK shakes his hand vigorously, pumping it up and down. Without letting go, MK says, “I hope you had fun meeting me.”

  “Yep.”

  Still MK shakes his hand. “Oh, good, because I want the kids I visit with to have a good time. I was worried there.”

  MK still shakes his hand and now Liam is laughing, his small body jouncing as if it were made of Jell-O.

  “Liam, what’s the matter?”

  “You won’t stop shaking my hand!”

  “Are you kidding? You won’t let go of mine!”

  Liam tries to pull away but MK continues to shake his hand, and now Liam is hysterical with laughter, practically doubled over, and then MK and Donald and Shea start laughing, too, until MK, pretending to use superhuman force, finally pulls away.

  “What a handshake!”

  Liam is gasping for breath, he’s laughing so hard. And as he gains control, MK, standing over him, mouths silently to Donald and Shea, “I love him.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  All About Me, Sweetheart

  A good recommendation from a nursery school that I respect is a strong place to start.

  —a head of a private school

  I have one word to say about feeder nursery schools: bullshit.

  —an educational consultant

  Feeding the Beast

  Are there really such things as feeder nursery schools?

  Every school head and admissions director I spoke to acknowledged that the relationship with each applicant’s preschool is one of the key elements in the kindergarten admissions process.

  Every preschool director I spoke to denied this.

  Preschool directors repeated, “I wish I had the power to get my kids in; I don’t,” so often that it rang in my ears like an anthem. Plausible deniability, I thought every time I heard it. Educational consultants echoed the refrain like backup singers.

  “Preschool directors deny that there are feeder nursery schools, but I know what I hear from parents,” one educational consultant said. “The ones who have their kids in those schools sure believe it.”

  Another educational consultant insisted, “There is no such animal as a feeder nursery school. A family will get in or not get in because of the family. It doesn’t matter where the kid goes to nursery school.”

  But school heads and directors of admissions in all innocence and honesty pulverized these claims; one clearly articulated why the relationship with the preschool is so important: “Yes, there are some nursery schools that are feeders. I hate the notion of it, but it’s just a fact. And over the years, patterns are repeated. We happen to live in a city where there are a lot of very good nursery schools. I want to emphasize that going to a nursery school that I don’t know well does not in any way rule somebody out. But knowing certain nursery schools helps. I know how a child has been brought along. I have a sense of what the family feels toward education, and the feeling that we’re all in the same boat, committed to the same things. You know if they get it. A good recommendation from a nursery school that I respect is a strong place to start.”

  Why then would preschool directors and educational consultants vehemently deny the notion of feeder nursery schools? One reason might lie in the preschool directors’ desire to create the illusion that they actually have little power when it comes to affecting admissions decisions. By diminishing their own power in the eyes of the parents, preschool directors take the pressure off getting children
into certain top-tier kindergartens as they strengthen the likelihood that other children will get into lower-tier schools. Of course, some preschool directors might enjoy basking in the glory of something akin to celebrity status, but this comes with a risk. If a preschool director alleges to have the ability to get children into certain schools but ultimately fails, the bubble bursts, credibility is shot, enrollment may suffer.

  “There is a nursery school in the city whose director claims that she will get them in,” an educational consultant said. “Last year a family who applied to eight elementary schools got into only their last choice. This director made the mistake of calling those parents a few days before and saying, ‘You’re in all of them. Don’t worry.’ Rumor has it that the mother threatened to sue the director of this nursery school for misleading them, calling it breach of promise. Not good.”

  Additionally, educational consultants, at least one of whom reportedly charges $6,000 per family for her services, maintain that preschool directors have little or no power. While I can’t deny that educational consultants serve a purpose for some people, this seems like a blatantly transparent attempt to preserve their own business. If the most important relationship in the process is that of the ongoing school’s director of admissions and the preschool director, it would appear that an independent educational consultant would become a third wheel, left out of the loop.