The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  New York mom Shea Cohen, a savvy Manhattan private school prospective parent, explained the relationship from the parents’ perspective. “The way it works is—or so you hear—the nursery school director will talk with the ongoing school. That conversation matters a lot. Your preschool director has to champion your cause. These schools talk to each other. When all the pieces are in, when we’ve finished all our interviews, when we’ve gotten the ERBs back, we’ll sit down with our director and she will say, ‘All right. Name the four places where you’ll be happy. And name one where you’ll be ecstatic.’ Let’s be honest. For the money we’ll be paying, I want to be ecstatic.”

  While the exact power a preschool director has in placing children in certain kindergartens remains nebulous (that is, known to some but kept secret from the public), it is disingenuous for any preschool director not to admit, even grudgingly, that her voice in the process matters, and sometimes mightily. Naturally all preschools or preschool directors are not created equal and therefore not all voices command the same degree of influence. But a preschool director’s opinion and the school’s teachers’ evaluations are crucial pieces of the puzzle.

  “You have to keep in mind that every kid is an unwritten book,” an admissions director said. “These are four-year-olds who are still very much in the process of forming and developing. I rely on what the preschool says and I depend on the preschool to be honest. I have respect for a preschool director who says to me, ‘I think you have a greater risk with this child than with that one.’ Of course, they have to be diplomatic. They have to be truthful with us and helpful to the parents. Tough position to be in. Very tough.”

  Depending on the school and the city, the role of the preschool director in the kindergarten admissions process can range from being a respected adviser to a silent partner. In New York, where the levels of intensity, panic, and desperation in the process outpace all other cities, the relationship between the ongoing school and preschool is considered crucial, with some calling it incestuous. Everywhere else, preschool directors are at a minimum kept constantly informed. A director of admissions at a school located in a city other than New York said, “I have continual conversations with nursery school directors. They get very anxious as it gets closer to the letters going out. They want to know has anything changed from the initial status we’ve given them. I’m obligated to them and I do my best to keep them in the loop.”

  At Pemberley School, Dana Optt disputed the notion of feeder nursery schools and offered this scenario. “I talk to preschool directors before my acceptance list goes out. Actually, I’ll talk to them by January and I’ll be very specific with them. I’ll say, ‘Look, I’m gonna be taking very few boys. I have so many sibling applicant boys this year. You really should push them to other schools to make sure they have a place. Be very careful with boys.’ Or, ‘This is a year where I have tons of diversity applications.’ I’m honest.

  “A couple of years ago I told them, ‘I don’t think I’m going to take any boys at all.’ The response was insane. People were screeching all over town. But at least I let them know in advance who I was taking and what the situation was. It’s not fair for them to be sitting there the Monday morning after the letters go out saying, ‘I don’t know why so-and-so didn’t get in.’ It’s not fair to the parents, and it’s not fair to the preschool directors.

  “The parents need the preschool directors to hold their hands through this. They have to be able to say, ‘Listen, I talked to Dana. She was really disappointed that she couldn’t let your family in. It was just a narrow spot. It was a big year for faculty, for diversity.’ That’s better than having Gracie at Bright Stars saying, ‘I have no idea what happened at Pemberley.’

  “I know that some schools like to keep this veil of mystery going. I don’t believe in that. I think it’s important to be as up front as possible with parents and preschools. This whole process is built on relationships. To start with, I need to be able to trust the preschool directors. One time I had a conversation with a preschool director who had sent me her list. I knew from a parent here that someone on the list was a nightmare. I called the director on it. I said, ‘Why would you send me people who are difficult? You wouldn’t do that, would you?’ She said, ‘Let me redo the list.’”

  Recently, two new trends have emerged, both inevitable, one in particular disturbing. In New York, proving once again that Manhattan is the hub of the private school admissions process, a few preschools have hired “exmissions directors,” whose sole responsibility is to help place children at ongoing schools.

  “If I wanted to, I could devote all of my time to the kindergarten application process,” a preschool director told me. “It has become that consuming, both in time and in energy. Forget curriculum, dealing with problems of parents, students, teachers . . . forget it. I need another me.”

  I encountered the second predictable and disturbing trend when I spoke to a friend who had just had a baby. Although she was four years away from applying to private school kindergarten, she was concerned that she was already shut out. I asked if she’d ever heard of feeder nursery schools.

  “Are you kidding? They’re impossible to get into,” she said. “You have to first get into a feeder Mommy & Me. And in order to get into one of those, you have to call the moment your kid is born, like from the hospital.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Absolutely. I waited until Tyler was three weeks old. Too late. The Mommy & Me I wanted was already full. There’s a waiting list. Maybe somebody will drop out. Otherwise, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  Is this where we’re headed? In order to get into Harvard, your child has to get into the right Mommy & Me?

  Or is that where we are?

  Fuckly

  For each Saturday visit at Pemberley, Dana Optt recruits fifteen faculty members to evaluate the thirty children who attend. The tests begin as soon as the children arrive; Dana and her team surreptitiously scribble on their evaluation forms even while the children are waiting to be called into the classrooms. They take careful note of who is sitting in a parent’s lap, who needs time to get warmed up, who is eager to jump right into an activity, and who is shy and requires more time to adjust to new surroundings. Ultimately what they are looking for are kids who can be part of a group and are willing to collaborate.

  One of the exercises Dana relies on involves a simple picture. The teachers give each child the same picture to look at, a drawing of a boy in front of an ice-cream store. There’s a dog in front. Dana asks, “What do you think is going on here?”

  Some kids say, “Dog, store, boy.”

  Which is the wrong answer. Dana is looking for three complete thoughts. The child who is on target will say, “There is a doggie in front of the store,” or “The boy is going into the store,” or “The boy is buying ice cream.” In contrast to what many parents believe, the number of sounds and letters a child knows has nothing to do with how well that child will read. Reading readiness has much more to do with the processing of language.

  “I had a kid who lived in one of the poorest, roughest parts of town,” Dana says. “He looked at that picture and said, ‘I think the boy is going to rob the store.’ That kid had an amazing processing of language.”

  This test to Dana is a great equalizer. “I’ve had kids from the fanciest parts of town going, ‘Dog, boy, store.’ I’ll call their preschool afterwards and ask, ‘Did their language come in late? They don’t seem to be connecting things together.’ It’s all about the language. That is the key for us. That tells me if someone is going to struggle with reading.”

  Dana divides the faculty into two groups: observers and facilitators. As the children work through their tests, the observers fill out forms, making judgments, assessing behavior, always keeping in mind that four-year-olds are unpredictable and that this is an artificial environment. Dana is looking for extremes, children who can’t engage, kids who act out, kids who manifest obvious learnin
g differences.

  “I know that as kids go through school, there will be something. There always is. I have never seen a kid who didn’t have an issue. But some kids have problems. There’s a difference. The Saturday visit often identifies those kids.”

  The evaluation takes about an hour. The kids move from table to table in different classrooms, working on a variety of skills.

  “I look at fine motor,” Dana says. “We ask the kids to do some drawing. It’s all developmental stuff. We’re not asking kids, ‘Can you recognize these letters? Can you read? Do you know these sounds?’ It’s much more about thinking. We’ll ask some analogies. I have worked with some of the best educational therapists in the city. We’ve created the test with the intent of trying to see how a child will do in elementary school; it’s not about how much a child knows now.”

  The other benefit of these Saturday evaluations is that Dana has the opportunity to interact with the children, away from their parents. Over the years Dana has learned that children are open, blunt, and uncensored.

  A four-year-old boy once said to her, “This is a very nice school. What do you have for lunch?”

  “We have pretty good food here,” Dana said. “Lots of different things.”

  “Well, my parents really want me to go to Meryton. Do you know if they have good lunches there?”

  “I hear they’re delicious,” Dana said. “And I love the people there. They’re very nice.”

  “Really? Great. Because that’s where I’m going.”

  “I wish I could’ve been in their car on the way home,” Dana said later with a sly smile.

  Another time a sad-faced five-year-old said to Dana, “My father will not let me have any guns to play with. But if you say I did a good job today, he’s taking me to Toys ‘R’ Us and buying me a big gun. And my mom said I can have anything else I want.”

  “What about me? I think I did a pretty good job,” Dana said. “Can I come with you?”

  In bed, as the local news leads into Leno’s monologue, Lauren and Craig Pernice talk about analogies.

  “Dana told us in our interview that they show the kids a picture,” Lauren says. “I presume they’re looking for the difference between the kids who say, ‘Dog, cat, yard’ and the kids who say, ‘Hey, that dog is chasing the cat through the yard.’ I think that’s what they’re looking for, a narrative of some kind.”

  “She also mentioned verbal analogies,” Craig reminds her.

  “You mean SAT-type analogies?”

  “I would assume so.”

  “That’s a pretty advanced skill for a four-year-old,” Lauren says.

  Craig nods, then looks up at the ceiling for a moment.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Craig shrugs, reaches over, and clicks off the light by the side of the bed.

  The next morning Craig comes in to breakfast holding an envelope. He grins at Killian, who sits at the table, slurping cereal.

  “Hey, Killian, check this out,” Craig says and shows him the envelope. On it he’d written, “Foot: shoe, head: blank.”

  “Oh my God,” Lauren says. She blows a small torrent of air upward, causing her bangs to flutter on her forehead.

  “So, Killian, if shoe goes after foot, what goes after head?”

  Killian stares at the envelope.

  “Think about it,” says Craig. “Foot, shoe, head—”

  “Hat?”

  “You got it!”

  “The analogies could be pictures for all we know,” Lauren says, her southern accent leaking out. “It may be the kind of thing you see on kids’ menus. It might not be these SAT things at all.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. It’s about getting comfortable with the format. That’s all it is.”

  “Encouraging and developing test-taking skills in preschool, is that what we’re doing here?”

  Craig pours a cup of coffee. “If he’s being tested, what’s wrong with a little coaching from his parents?”

  “Nothing. Or we could just leave him alone and say, ‘It will be what it will be.’”

  Craig looks at her through a slim smile, which, translated, says, I’m not about to do that.

  The morning of his Pemberley visit, Lauren pours Killian’s cereal into a bowl.

  “No,” Craig says.

  Lauren stops midpour. “No?”

  “You need to give him a protein breakfast. Studies have shown that people think better on a protein breakfast.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m serious. He’s got to have protein.”

  Lauren stares at Craig. Craig meets her eyes. He’s serious. Lauren shrugs. Cereal back into the cabinet, she quickly scrambles two eggs and pops two pieces of bread into the toaster. Killian picks at the eggs, devours the toast. As Lauren clears the table, Craig leaves the kitchen. He returns moments later with a comb and hair gel.

  “We have to comb his hair,” he says. “His hair is unruly. He looks so much better with his hair combed.”

  Lauren lays the dishes in the sink, whirls around, and barricades herself between her son and her husband.

  “Lauren, what are you doing? Get out of my way.”

  “No hair gel,” she says.

  Craig studies his wife. Her eyes have become wide brown circles. “Lauren, I want to comb his hair,” he pleads.

  “No hair gel, Craig. Do not put hair gel in my son’s hair.”

  “Why not?”

  “BECAUSE IT LOOKS STUPID!”

  Craig pauses. He’s not sure he’s ever seen Lauren so . . . insane. “Okay, fine, just the comb. Look. I’m putting down the hair gel.”

  As Craig runs the comb through Killian’s hair, Lauren stuffs the tube of hair gel into the pocket of her apron.

  On the drive over to Pemberley, Lauren tries to conceal her nervousness by singing along to a Beatles song on the radio. Killian says nothing, asks one question: “How will I find you afterwards?”

  “We’re going to be in the library,” Lauren says.

  “Is it far away?”

  “Nope. It’s across the hall about two doors down from where you’ll be. It’s very close.”

  “Good. I just wanted to make sure you would be close by.”

  “I’m going to be very close by, I promise.”

  Lauren realizes now that Killian, too, is nervous.

  They pull into the parking lot, climb out of the car, and head slowly toward the kindergarten classrooms. Suddenly, Killian says, “Fuckly.”

  “What?”

  “Fuckly,” he repeats, and points at a sign that says “Faculty.”

  Thank God, Lauren thinks. I thought he was pissed off about the process and cursing me out.

  Pemberley begins the evaluation with a clever, nasty trick.

  Lauren and Killian enter the library. Dana and Gail greet them. Dana says hello, then asks each parent to fill out a nametag, which are laid out on a table. Lauren leans over the table and begins writing her name. As she is writing, she notices out of the corner of her eye that Gail has grabbed Killian’s hand and is whisking him away.

  “Bye, Killian,” Lauren says. “See you in an hour.”

  But he’s gone.

  In a few minutes, after the kids have all been taken from the room, Reese, the head of Pemberley School, comes in and explains about the nametag diversionary tactic.

  “Look, we have the technology here to print out lovely nametags in colorful fonts, but we do it this way so you have something to do while we take your kids,” she says. “Otherwise, believe me, we wouldn’t get half of them in there. At least not without a fight.”

  After slightly less than an hour of questions the kids return. They march in, all wearing nametags. Lauren practically jogs over to Killian. “Hey, you got a nametag,” she says.

  “Yep. We had to find them ourselves.”

  “What else did you guys do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Come on. What did you do?”

 
; Killian shrugs. “I’m not going to tell you.”

  I Don’t Wanna

  On Thursday and Friday, Katie Miller guards what she says to her daughter Alex. She does not want to create any sense of anxiety, but at the same time she wants Alex to look forward to her Saturday morning “play date” at Hunsford.

  “I want her to be aware of it. In a fun way,” she tells Trina D’Angelo on the phone. “I don’t want to make a big deal about it.”

  “You want her to be prepared, that’s all,” Trina says.

  “Correct. No surprises. I think after Evergreen, she’ll be fine. She had such a good time there. I’ve been telling her it’ll be basically the same thing.” Katie sighs. “Trina, this is so draining.”

  “Honey, she will kill at Hunsford. Afterwards, you’ll write a lovely letter. And then all we have to do is distract ourselves for three fucking months while we wait for the mail to come.”

  “That is the worst part, I swear.”

  “Why do we have to wait so long? Why can’t they let you know like in two weeks?”

  “When I rule the world,” Katie says, “I will change that.”

  “Let’s try to make this like any other Saturday morning,” Katie says to Miles over coffee. It is just after seven o’clock.

  Hunched over the sports section, her husband grunts, scratches the stubble on his cheek. He yawns. “You want me to take her to breakfast?”

  “I think so, yeah. Keep it normal. You take her to breakfast, I’ll go to the bank with Nicky. Just be back no later than nine forty-five. Her interview is at ten-twenty.”

  Miles nods. Katie refills his cup, adds a splash to hers, starts to drink, sighs, dumps the coffee into the sink.

  “I’m a teeny bit nervous,” she says.

  “No, really?” Miles says, not looking up from the paper.

  “Just a tad,” Katie says on her way out of the room.

  It takes longer than Katie expects at the bank. She has discovered inconsistencies in her account, possibly forgery. Opening a new account, transferring funds, filling out forms, and dealing with two-year-old Nick, who was not thrilled being dragged away from his favorite Saturday morning cartoon, takes more time and causes more tension than she had anticipated. When she pulls into the driveway with her account settled and Nick in tow, it is nearly ten. She is eager to get to Hunsford. Entering the living room, she is surprised to find Alex camped in front of the television, still in her pajamas. Inexplicably, Miles has not gotten her ready for the interview.