You’ve read the stories about the craziness of the Kindergarten admission process in New York City, but here are faces and places to make it come alive. The documentary “Getting In…Kindergarten” follows three families as they apply: a white single mom who works as a librarian, an African-American couple (dad went to a top school and would love for his his daughter to get in, mom’s a teacher), and a wealthy white Park Avenue couple that works in the fashion industry.
DC-area parents, how does this stack up to your experiences here? Would you “go public” and participate in a film project like this?
(On YouTube in six segments. Here’s the link to the filmmaker. Hat tip to Finding Schools.)
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Well, I’ve been watching those for an hour now and it’s utterly fascinating.
What a fantastic documentary! I read a novel about the NY kindergarten admissions merry-go-round a few months ago (I’m in the UK), but this brought it all very vividly to life. Thanks very much for highlighting it
p.s. And thank goodness I don’t live in NY…
This documentary was riveting to me as I have a son who is enrolled in public kindergarten in Chesterfield County, VA. It was so difficult to decide what to do for him and I am still not certain I made the right choice. At least I’m not in Harlem; that “80% read below grade level” statistic was frightening to me!
Pssssst. One of the mom’s featured in the documentary has joined a thread about this (my) blog post over at the Davidson bulletin board. How’s that for convoluted? Very interesting discussion!
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/62440/Documentary_about_New_Yorkers_.html
The whole process has bad points, and maybe a few good points.
The “brokering” from the preschools could help the child wind up in a place that is appropriate for him/her. Or it could be a competition between parents for the approval of the preschool director with very little to do with the child. And, of course, the preschools get “reputations” with the schools. So there is an incentive to push the “best” children to the “best” schools, whether or not that fits *that* child’s learning style.
If you aren’t the standard parent, you can get a huge array of people telling you that you are ruining your child.
And, of course, the fact that almost no one outside of New York City deals with the same problem makes the parents isolated. And the money ….
Good points for both sides, Kirsten. I’m just thankful I was able to waltz in in late spring and snag a spot for my then four year old firstborn. No crazy waiting overnight in line.
My daughter went to the preschool with the “overnight line” in our area; it wasn’t actually like that the year she was going into the 3 year old class. Parents do like to exaggerate the extremes. But we couldn’t get the MWF schedule with our start time for waiting in line (maybe 8am-ish). The MWF was more popular than the Tuesday-Thursday schedule. And fairly few parents had their child in line with them, which surprised me.
I am amazed by the amount of time the parents were able to spend on the process in New York City. I guess some of it was done while their children were in preschool or the parents were filmed while their children were doing the playdate interviews. But 30 appointments while being a single working mom?!!!!! How did she avoid getting fired?!
[...] unique microcosm of craziness, New York City school admissions. You can get a taste in one of my previous posts, on the documentary “Getting [...]
[...] unique microcosm of craziness, New York City school admissions. You can get a taste in one of my previous posts, on the documentary “Getting [...]