The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  “Those are the faces of Pemberley,” Dana says. She stands now at a podium, which during the PowerPoint presentation has arisen out of the stage floor.

  “Do you know what I love about kindergarten?” Dana asks the crowd before her. “Everything is still possible.”

  Dana pauses for a tiny beat to allow the three hundred-plus parents before her to absorb this simple, pithy thought. “That is the Pemberley philosophy. We hold on to that for as long as possible. We want children to keep these three words in their heads and their hearts forever: Yes, I can!”

  If Dana could observe the three hundred faces in the crowd in close-up, she would see a hundred heads nodding fervently, accompanied by a dozen women actually tearing up.

  “I know this is the beginning of what will be a year of stress and anxiety and, inevitably, disappointment. But I want to say one more thing to you, as a parent and as an educator.”

  Again, Dana pauses. Her voice, amplified through the crystal-clear acoustics in the auditorium, is melodic and full of weight. “Don’t rush. Enjoy your last year of preschool. It’s precious time. Don’t waste it. Don’t lose it. And don’t prep your kids for kindergarten. Please. Don’t drill them with flash cards. Don’t put them in intensive, inappropriate math programs. Don’t . . . do not coach them for their school visits. Please. I know it’s hard, but try to relax.”

  A huge laugh.

  “I mean it. If for no other reason than your child will pick up on your anxiety and will feel anxious herself. And she won’t know why. And what are you going to tell her? You can’t tell her anything. You shouldn’t. You’d better not. I wish we—and I do mean we, because I’m right in the middle of it—could just allow our children to be.”

  Applause.

  “I want to say a few words about Pemberley and then I’ll give you some cold, hard facts. The best way to describe Pemberley is that we are academically challenging and developmentally appropriate. Our key word here in all things is balance. We teach the basics, reading, writing, math, science, the arts, and we teach kids how to cooperate with each other. We have small classes and we divide these small classes further into small groups. We want our kids to learn how to collaborate. One of the differences between us and public school is that we get to choose our own curriculum. We get to tailor what we teach to our own population.”

  A hundred pens scratching paper, scribbling notes, clicking like a field of crickets.

  “You will hear all about our curriculum in more detail when you take the tour. But to sum it up, our goals at Pemberley are to teach children confidence, independence, and how to learn. Now. Let me just bust one myth. The Pemberley Homework Myth. The number one question I’m asked? ‘Mrs. Optt, is it true that the kids at Pemberley have four hours of homework a night?’”

  Dead silence.

  “Okay, here’s the truth. You ready? In kindergarten, there is no homework. In first and second grades, the kids have a total of thirty minutes a night—twenty minutes of reading, and ten minutes of other subjects. In third grade, kids have to read a half hour a night, and they have another twenty minutes of homework. Fourth grade, it goes up to forty-five minutes a night, in fifth grade it’s an hour. By sixth grade, which is middle school, kids get between sixty minutes and ninety minutes a night. That’s it. That’s the truth. Four hours a night in kindergarten? Until fifth grade, they don’t have four hours a week.”

  A hum buzzes through the crowd.

  “I don’t know how these rumors start, but now you have the facts. And if you don’t believe me, ask any of the student senators who are with us tonight. They’ll set you straight.”

  She nods at a group of students seated together in the front row. One of them says something to her. She cups her fingers over her ear. “What, Simon? You don’t have any homework?”

  Simon, the boy who greeted Katie and Trina, leans over two other children and speaks inaudibly to Dana.

  “Oh,” Dana says. “You don’t do any homework.”

  The audience laughs. Dana grins at Simon. “Simon is our resident comedian.” She glances back at Simon, who bobs his head in agreement.

  “Now, I know you’re all wondering,” Dana says, “what kind of child are we looking for? I am looking for all kinds of kids. We don’t want a class of just extremely bright, high-achieving kids. We want a mix. We want kids who are loud and energetic and kids who are shy and laid-back. We want kids who are leaders and ones who will grow into being leaders. A well-balanced group. That’s what we’re looking for. Now, what about getting into Pemberley? What do the numbers look like for next September? Well, look around. There are over three hundred of you here tonight and this is only our first of six open houses. My math is rusty but I think that’s eighteen hundred people coming through here. Of course, not everyone will submit an application. But that’s why you’re here: to see if Pemberley feels right for you, for your child, and for your whole family. We are not a drop-off school. If that’s what you want, you’re in the wrong place. We are a community. And we want you to make a commitment to become a part of our community. If this all sounds right to you, then follow me, and let’s tour the campus.”

  The hum returns. Only now it builds to a crescendo resembling the opening musical sting in an action movie, signaling that the first bloody battle is about to begin.

  Camped on the left side of the auditorium, two-thirds of the way up, Trina D’Angelo turns to Katie Miller.

  “Oh. My. God,” Trina says. “I love her.”

  “So you want to stay?” Katie suddenly sounds winded.

  “You don’t want to take the tour?”

  “I don’t know. I’m tired. Do you like it?”

  “For Pascal, yes. For me, no. I mean, I drive a Honda.”

  “Miles could never relate to these people. Alex would be fine. Alex will be fine anywhere. Alex would be fine in public—”

  Katie stops in midsentence. She realizes that she and Trina are the only two people left in their section.

  “It’s kind of now or never,” Trina says.

  Katie doesn’t move.

  “You know what,” Trina says quietly. “Let’s go. I’ve seen enough.”

  “But you like it—”

  “I like the school. I like what Dana said. Everybody’s telling me Pascal would love it here. But look around. I’m not fitting in with these parents. Plus I’m never getting in.”

  “What about the D word?”

  “I don’t think my kind of diversity works here. That Simon kid is probably Condi and Colin’s secret love child.”

  “Aw, screw it.” Katie is on her feet, sidestepping out of the row. “Let’s take the tour. It’s more information. Come on.”

  Trina sighs, gets up. “You’re driving me crazy, you know that?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Thick Folder,

  a Thin Applicant

  When it comes to the applications, it’s amazing. Half of the parents can’t write and the other half are clueless.

  —an educational consultant

  The Application

  What should I write on the application to make me—I mean, my child—stand out?

  Step One.

  Call the schools you’re applying to and have them send you an application.

  This is not as easy as it sounds.

  Some schools refuse to send you an application. In order to maybe receive an application from these schools, you must first enter a lottery. You do so by pre-applying, filling out a postcard prior to a certain cutoff date. A few weeks later, someone, presumably the director of admissions, will draw a hundred postcards out of, I imagine, a bin or tumbler similar to those on a game show or, as in dreaded days past, the draft lottery. The school then mails applications to those lucky one hundred, to be returned within the month, filled out and accompanied by a $125 check.

  Another school invited an unlimited number of applications to be submitted, but when it came time to schedule tours and interviews, the admissions director
allegedly pulled seventy-five applications for girls out of a hat and seventy-five applications for boys out of another hat.

  “I actually saw the hats,” an educational consultant told me. “The boys’ hat was a baseball cap and the girls’ hat was a straw hat. I found it interesting, though, that when the one hundred and fifty applicants were pulled out, somehow the most prominent families in the city were magically chosen. I’ve heard they’ve since abandoned the hats but they still only take a hundred and fifty applications. How they choose them is anyone’s guess.”

  I encountered the most exclusionary method of parceling out applications when I visited an elite school in an expensive suburb of a major city. I politely asked the receptionist for an application. She told me that I had to go home, call back, and request a tour and an interview with the director of admissions, who, after spending an hour with me and my wife, would determine at that time if she would allow us to apply.

  “So you actually prescreen all your prospective parents?” I had to repeat this because I wasn’t sure I understood.

  “Yes. We find it a very efficient weeding-out process.”

  Rumors abound. Some schools, the Evergreen School among them, supposedly consider only the first one hundred applications they receive. Of course, they don’t necessarily notify you if your application does not fall within the cutoff. Other schools, including Meryton, allow you to tour the school only after you have submitted your application and paid your $150 application fee, after you’ve “won” their lottery.

  “That place is shrouded in mystery,” Katie Miller said. “Since they don’t let you see it until you apply, you have to go solely by what you read in their brochure or what you hear around. So when it says on the application, ‘Tell me how your family values match the philosophy of the school,’ you’re kind of strapped. You have to write something right out of their mission statement. What else can you do? It’s very frustrating.”

  Step Two.

  Fill out the application.

  Your mission is to hook the reader while not raising any red flags.

  Application for Admission

  Kindergarten

  A TOP-TIER PRIVATE SCHOOL

  Sibling Due Date: SEPTEMBER 10

  General Due Date: OCTOBER 15

  The Early Bird Special

  After narrowing her school choices to five, Katie Miller put herself on the clock and laid out a schedule that drove her to complete all of her applications by the last week in August, in plenty of time for her husband to go over them, make his notes and edits, and for her to get them in to the schools during the first week of September, well ahead of the October 15 deadline.

  “A friend of mine told me to get the applications in early if you really want a school, because even if they don’t say it, schools look at the first applications more seriously. I’m taking her advice. For one thing, I want them out of my life; want them off my plate, onto their plate. But it is partly calculated as to when they get them. I want to appear serious. I don’t know if it makes a darn bit of difference.”

  New York mom Shea Cohen also used the summer to complete all seven of her applications, including writing the general essay required by six of the schools. She printed out her first draft and gave it to her husband, Donald, for a once-over. He went through it methodically with a red pencil. Shea incorporated his changes and finished the applications by the second week of August.

  “Mission accomplished,” Shea said with a massive sigh.

  Trina D’Angelo and Lauren Pernice waited until the eleventh hour to finish their applications. Trina put off writing hers because she was “frozen.”

  “I hate this,” she told Katie. “It’s gross. I don’t know what to write. I’m only applying to three schools. Will you write them for me? Please? Don’t forget to mention that I’m Mexican.”

  Somehow Trina managed to complete the three applications herself, mailing them a few days before the due date.

  “Are you going to drive them over?” Katie asked her.

  “Katie, unless the deadline is like today, you do not hand-deliver your applications. That makes you look so desperate.”

  “We are desperate.”

  “I know, but we don’t want to look desperate.”

  Lauren applied to only two schools—Pemberley, truthfully her first and only choice, and Wickham, a late entry.

  “We added Wickham because it seems, I don’t know, insane to apply to just one school,” she said, her Virginia lilt accenting the apparent absurdity of her decision. “We threw in Wickham because (a) it’s got a good reputation, but when we visited we thought it was so homogenous and bordering on the militaristic that it didn’t really speak to us, and (b) it is geographically desirable, as in, five minutes from our house in traffic. So it’s just Pemberley, please God, and Wickham, ridiculously, our backup.”

  Lauren typed out her applications and presented them to her husband, Craig. He pored laboriously over what she’d written.

  “No, no, no,” he said, crossing everything out. “This doesn’t tell you anything. We have to start over.”

  Craig and Lauren then sat down together and rewrote the applications side by side, with Lauren providing much of the content and Craig supplying the style. In total, Lauren estimates that they spent between six and eight hours on the applications. They finished the morning of October 15. Craig dropped off the Wickham application on his way to work and Lauren drove the application to Pemberley and hand-delivered it to Gail, Dana Optt’s assistant.

  Do Katie and Shea have an advantage because they submitted their applications earlier? Does their timing underline their seriousness or show a sense of desperation?

  “Doesn’t matter if you get your application in early or late,” Dana Optt said. “Doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t matter if it’s sent by mail or dropped off in the office. I don’t care if it’s typed or handwritten. People ask me if I prefer laser or inkjet. It. Does. Not. Matter.”

  Applicant

  BOY GIRL (please circle)

  FULL LEGAL NAME: Killian Michael Pernice

  NAME STUDENT PREFERS (NICKNAME): Killian

  DATE OF BIRTH: April 21, year

  CURRENT SCHOOL: Bright Stars

  FATHER’S EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: BA

  COLLEGE AFFILIATION: Harvard

  MOTHER’S EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: BA; MA

  COLLEGE AFFILIATION: Harvard

  Legacy

  “Here is something important that we look for in the application.”

  MK, director of admissions at the Longbourne School, paused, then spoke barely above a whisper. “Legacy. That has a lot to do with getting into college. I look to see where the parents went to college. If they went to Princeton, Harvard, Yale, then the kid’s got a good chance of going there as well. They’re legacies. So if you’re a K-through-twelve school, where the parents went to college matters. Nobody will admit it, but it’s true. For good reason. You don’t want parents who didn’t go to a certain college thinking that they’re at a disadvantage. But we look at it. Both parents went to Harvard? Kid’s a double legacy. We like that. A lot.”

  The New Middle

  Please send me a financial aid application.

  With the cost of private school soaring, threatening to reach a stratospheric $30,000 per year, more families than ever before are considering applying for financial aid. But how do you know if you qualify? Is there a cutoff figure?

  “There was a statistic that came out recently,” said Dana Optt, Pemberley’s director of admissions. “Right now, if you make $192,000 a year, you’re eligible for financial aid. We call these people the New Middle.”

  If the New Middle makes what ten years ago would have defined them as upper-class, then we are witnessing an alarming downward spiral. The Old Middle has apparently plummeted into what is now lower-class, and our former lower-class has, by logic, sunk into poverty. The distance between the New Middle and the New Lower has widened, exponentially, frighteningly.


  Red Flag #1: See Attached

  From your perspective, in what kind of learning environment would your child thrive?

  See attached.

  What individual and family activities does your child enjoy?

  See attached.

  If your child is currently attending a nursery school or preschool program, please briefly describe the program and comment on your child’s experience in that program.

  See attached.

  Tell us about your child’s characteristics, traits, personality, and maturity so we may have a clear picture of how you view him or her. If your child has any special needs, please discuss them here.

  See attached.

  How would you as parents like to be involved in supporting the school community?

  See attached.

  Please feel free to include any additional comments about your child or your family.

  See attached.

  MK reflected the opinion of many school officials: “The one red flag that’s consistent is length. I get so many applications that are ridiculously long. I honestly will not read them. I won’t read the essay unless it’s short and concise. I’m sure parents put in a lot of time and energy, but there’s an old saying: ‘The thicker the folder, the thinner the applicant.’”

  Edgar Mantle, the head of Evergreen School, agreed.

  “My number one red flag, by far, is quantity,” he said. A large man, a former college basketball player whose width has started to catch up to his height, Edgar favors tweed sports jackets and colorful ties. He speaks operatically in both volume and gesture, reminding you of the late raconteur Peter Ustinov.