New York Sign Language N.Y. Parents Scramble for a Spot in Public Schools By BOB YAMPOLSKY	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
ニューヨークの幼稚園入園は大激戦 自分の子供をいい幼稚園に入れたい、という親心は万国共通。ニューヨークでは、授業料の高い私立の幼稚園よりも、少しでも評判のよい公立幼稚園に子供たちを入れようと、親の間で競争が高まっています。IQテストに面接と、大学受験も真っ青のその実態とは？

March is cruel in New York. It is a month of crushed hopes and dashed ambitions, of anguished souls bewailing their plight. Why is this? It is because March is when kindergartens here send out notification of acceptance or, far more frequently, of rejection.

When I took my kids to the playground this afternoon I saw Anne, Nancy's mom; she did not look very happy.

"It's been a total disaster," Anne said, and she proceeded to name all the schools that had rejected Nancy, or had placed her on the waiting list.

A little while later Angela, Zoe's mom, showed up. Zoe had been waitlisted at every school to which her parents had applied. Angela appeared to be in a state of suppressed panic. She kept throwing up her hands, saying, "I don't know what we're going to do."

I tried to reassure her. "You'll get in somewhere. Everyone does," I said, though not very convincingly.

"Oh, sure, we'll send her to 165, and she'll be the only white kid in her class." No. 165 is the local public school.

When it comes time for their children to start going to school, New York parents, like parents anywhere, are faced with a fundamental decision: public or private? For the vast majority of parents, the cost of a private school education is prohibitively expensive, so they send their kids to the local public school.

Anne and Angela and I — we all know each other because our children go to the same nursery school — belong somewhere in the middle. Some of us could afford to send our kids to private school (where tuition for kindergarten starts in the $12,000 [¥1.26 million] to $15,000 [¥1.57 million] range). But that would put a significant dent in our budgets, so we'd prefer to send our kids to public school.

The only problem with this is that our local public school, like so many public schools in New York, does not have a good reputation. The test scores of its students are low, and several years back it was cited by the school chancellor on a list of "failing schools."

Furthermore, 90 percent of its students are the children of recent immigrants, meaning that much of the school's resources are directed toward teaching English as a second language.

Nevertheless, there are public school options open to people like us. To begin with, there are several public schools with competitive admission. These are awfully difficult to get into. Even to be considered for admission, your child has to score in the 99th percentile on an IQ test, and after that, he or she is subject to a battery of tests and interviews. Fewer than one child in 20 eventually gets admitted.

Next, there are two or three good schools in our district that offer spaces to children outside the neighborhood. This, too, is a highly competitive process, with about one in every eight to 10 children getting in.

Finally, there are the so-called "gifted and talented" programs. These are special programs at regular public schools for children who meet certain standards, like scoring in the 90th percentile or above on IQ tests.

These programs result in de facto racial segregation in schools, as children in these gifted programs tend overwhelmingly to be white and upper middle class, while those in the standard classes tend to be minority lower or lower middle class. It is an uncomfortable situation, both for the parents and the children. Sensible people, if they have a choice, avoid this.

When March comes around, however, most people find that they do not have much of a choice. Based on the anecdotal evidence, competition has been fierce this year. This is probably due to the fact that as the quality of life in the city has improved, more and more young parents are staying, rather than moving out to the suburbs.

I went through this hell last year, when I was trying to get my daughter into a public kindergarten. On the applications I wrote lengthy essays explaining how the school's educational philosophy matched ours exactly and I made wild promises about how active my wife and I would be in the parents' association.

I had a few sleepless nights and a number of bitten-down nails. In the end, lo and behold, we got in where we wanted, a small public school with an excellent reputation.

And so this afternoon, while I did my best to try to encourage Anne and Angela, I knew that they probably didn't want to hear too much from me. Not only had I been successful where they, so far, had failed. But my school has a sibling policy, meaning that younger brothers and sisters of children enrolled there get in automatically. My son is a classmate of Nancy and Zoe's; to enroll him for kindergarten, all I had to do was fill in a form.

As I walked away from Anne and Angela to go and play with my kids, I heard them start in about how insane and unfair the entire process is. If you ask me, though, I think it works just fine.

Shukan ST: March 31, 2000

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