Education: Big Crunch for Kindergartens

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."