Big Crunch for Kindergartens

By Kenneth M. Pierce

Preschoolers and parents get an early taste of angst and elitism

Everybody knows that if you apply to a top-ranked private college the odds against admission are long and the chances of devastating disappointment great. But huge numbers of parents who want to get their children into private schools have discovered that the trauma of admissions screening nowadays begins at age four--the year before kindergarten.

Admission to good kindergartens in big cities has been tight since World War II. But lately the situation has become preposterous. In San Francisco two-thirds of the children applying to private kindergartens fail to get into their first-choice school. In Boston anxious parents of 80 preschoolers have sent in applications more than a year in advance for next year's class at the Commonwealth Day School. In New York the Educational Records Bureau, which evaluates applicants for kindergartens, is doing a thriving business. Says Helen LaCroix, director of admissions at Chicago's Francis W. Parker School: "It's become a little more difficult to get into a private kindergarten than to enroll in college."

Private kindergarten used to be only for the children of high-paid professionals and the very rich. No longer. The two-income family has created both a greater need for kindergartens--and nursery schools--and often also an ability to pay, somehow, the $2,000 to nearly $4,000 that many kindergartens now charge. In 1968 only a third of the nation's three-to fiveyear-olds were enrolled in nursery schools or kindergartens, but by 1978 the number had jumped to more than 50%. "Right now," says Robert Munro of the Bentley School in Oakland, Calif., "we have children of postal workers, bus drivers and truckers." Not only can such parents pay, they also share a belief that public schools, even in kindergarten, are unreliable. Because of the possibility of strikes, curriculum cutbacks, busing problems and even school closings, says David Fleishhacker, headmaster of the Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco, parents cannot be sure what public schools will be like from year to year. "Private schools seem more stable." Says San Francisco Child Specialist Jeanne Lepper: "Parents think, 'Oh, my God, if my child doesn't make it at the beginning he won't have a chance later.' "

With an excess of demand for too few places, admissions officers have become choosy. The process at San Francisco's Town School for Boys is typical: parents meet the headmaster, return for a tour of the building, and then bring their young candidate for a visit; finally, during a fourth trip to the school, the child spends an all-important hour as a member of a play group under the watchful eye of the school staff. Among the weighty questions: Can he hold a pencil? Play with others? Put a puzzle together? "We want somebody who is compatible with our philosophy of education," says Assistant Headmaster Bruce Knee, adding: "If a boy comes in and starts throwing blocks, we'll recommend he go to nursery school."

In an effort to pick the best candidates, kindergarten admissions officers sometimes visit the nursery schools of their applicants to check up. Many parents have been startled at requests for letters of recommendation on behalf of kindergarten applicants. Schools in New York City are interested as well in the previous schools attended by kindergarten hopefuls. Fumes one mother: "I was appalled when I received application forms from schools asking what nursery school my daughter went to."

Often the admissions routine is repeated several times as parents apply to two or three schools, paying application fees that range from $25 to $40. Recalls one Atlanta mother whose daughter was accepted this year at the Lovett School: "You promise your child that you'll take her to Steak n Shake if she doesn't say 'I don't like you' during the interview. When the day comes, you're a nervous wreck and the kid's delighted that she's going to Steak n Shake two days in a row." Sometimes the pedagogues disagree. Says a San Francisco mother: "My daughter got fed up after visiting the second school. She refused to cooperate by signing her drawings. One of the schools told me this indicated she was insubordinate. Another said it showed her sensitivity."

Parents go through the crunch, financial and emotional, in hopes of ensuring that their children will be able to make it at good elementary and secondary schools and into a top college. "The race for Harvard starts at age three," cracks Jamee Gregory, whose daughter Samantha entered kindergarten at New York's Spence this fall. Agrees Bernard Ivaldi, director of San Francisco's French-American Bilingual School: "I have had parents come in and say they want their kids to go to Stanford. And the kid is only five!"

School officials agree that the parents suffer the most. Says one New York mother: "While we were going through this, I was like a witch on a broom." Recalls Ivaldi: "I have had mothers break down and cry in my office." Jeanne Lepper: "Our job is to help families live with the strain, to encourage them to think about all the other possibilities, not just getting their kid into their first-choice kindergarten." Admissions officers report occasional offers of bribes and reminders of longstanding friendship by the parents of applying youngsters. As Darla Poythress of Atlanta's Trinity School puts it: "Parents believe that if they don't get their kids in at the kindergarten level, they won't get them in at all." That belief is often correct.

In contrast to Europe, which has always started screening children early on the education ladder, America has traditionally been the country of delayed decision. Those days may be gone forever.

--By Kenneth M. Pierce. Reported by Robert Geline/New York and Patricia Roberto/San Francisco

With reporting by Robert Geline, Patricia Roberto

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