With 1.4 million school-aged children, New York City has the nation’s biggest public school system, the densest concentration of private schools, and admissions competition for the under-5 set so intense that it has inspired satirical novels and critically-acclaimed documentaries—while bewildering and frustrating countless parents. Each year, rumors and misinformation about the availability of spots and what it takes to get into certain schools only make matters worse.
To help guide you through the city’s various admissions processes, here’s an overview of recent trends in admissions for nursery school and both public and private kindergarten, along with answers to common questions and helpful resources.
NURSERY SCHOOL
The good news: If you apply to enough private preschools—and your list goes beyond the most competitive schools—you are likely to get in somewhere. (This is not the case with public pre-K, which is only offered to 4-year-olds, and has recently seen an increase in applications.)
Gina Malin of the Parents League, a nonprofit group supported by independent schools and member families, advises parents to contact “10 schools to get eight applications,” but adds that “this isn’t a hard and fast number.” If you have twins or live in a family-heavy neighborhood like the Upper East Side, you should probably add a few more schools to the list.
As you are forming your list, it’s especially important to contact the schools (or visit their websites) and note their systems for giving out applications (i.e. website, phone call or lottery). Get out your calendar: many schools only give out applications on the day after Labor Day (and the most popular ones often run out by midday), while other schools offer applications more freely in the course of the fall.
Take note of the minimum age of entry at schools that interest you, as well as the age at which the school has the most openings. Manhattan has more programs that start closer to or at age 3 than those that start at age 2, but the number of schools offering classes for 2-year-olds has expanded greatly in recent years. Some schools that start at age 2 may take most of their students at that age, whereas other schools with 2-year-old programs might have a greater share of their students starting at age 3.
If you do not receive any preschool acceptances or if you have moved to the city too late to apply, you can call the Parents League to find schools with openings. Executive director Kathy Shea says the number of parents who are rejected from all the preschools they apply to is “not huge” and “they pretty much get placed somewhere.”
Looking ahead? Parents may have an unfounded fear that only the “right” preschool will guarantee entry to a good private kindergarten. Wendy Levey, founder and director of Epiphany Community Nursery School, says that on the contrary, “ongoing schools are trying to take children from a variety of programs,” an assertion backed by private schools reports. At the same time, if parents applying to nursery school think they are likely to be applying to private school in a few years, they should inquire about a nursery school’s track record for placing children in private school to ensure that it’s a school with experience in ex-missions and has positive relationships with a lot of private schools.
COMMON QUESTIONS:
WHEN TO START THINKING ABOUT IT: Parents must apply a full calendar year before their child would attend, so it’s wise to start looking in the spring and the summer to be ready to get applications in the fall, advises Roxana Reid of Smart City Kids, an experienced admissions consultancy. Again, you want to make sure you know whether a school you’re interested in gives out its applications on the day after Labor Day.
WHERE TO FIND MORE INFORMATION: Victoria Goldman’s “The Manhattan Directory of Private Nursery Schools” profiles some 150 preschools, describes the different types of instruction, and suggests questions for parents to ask themselves and ask schools. Parents can join the Parents League for $195 to have an advisor like Gina Malin walk them through the process, get a guide to the city’s nursery schools, and sign up for admissions workshops. Also, New York Family regularly sponsors admissions seminars featuring groups of experienced school directors.
PUBLIC KINDERGARTEN
This year, an unprecedented number of elementary schools have wait lists for neighborhood children ready for kindergarten. “The enrollments have been booming, particularly in Manhattan below 96th Street,” says Clara Hemphill, senior editor at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, the founder of Insideschools.org, and author of several guides to New York City public schools. New residential construction in some neighborhoods has brought more families with young children into some areas that already had overcrowded schools.
This means parents can no longer take their neighborhood school for granted, and should identify the school for which they are zoned and learn its admissions procedure well in advance.
The good news is the city’s Department of Education has started to open new schools to alleviate overcrowding. Pamela Wheaton, Director of Insideschools.org, praises new schools such as PS 276 (in Battery Park City), PS 397 (also lower Manhattan) and the re-opened PS 151 (Upper East Side) as “fabulous” places with talented principals and good facilities.
Wheaton says, “There’s a slight chance that in a few overcrowded zones, you might get locked out of your neighborhood school, but the chances that you will be put into another good school are also pretty good.” She adds, “I think parents worry needlessly….The fact is that with a few exceptions most of the schools in District 2 [below 96th Street on the East Side, below 59th Street on the West Side, and Downtown] and District 3 [Upper West Side] in Manhattan are great schools.” She also cites District 15 [Park Slope in Brooklyn] for its large number of good elementary schools.
Parents interested in public school Gift & Talented (G & T) programs should pay close attention to the Department of Education’s website for general information and application deadlines. Wheaton cautions that gifted programs “really vary from school to school.” She says, “If you are lucky to have a good neighborhood school, then the smart kid doesn’t always need a G & T program.”
Many children with qualifying scores do not end up in G & T programs because there aren’t programs near enough to their home neighborhood, or there aren’t spots available in the particular programs they want. Although the number of children tested for this coming school year decreased 16 percent from the previous year to 12,454, those qualifying for gifted spots in district kindergartens increased by 10 percent to 3,582, and those eligible for (but not guaranteed) spots in citywide programs jumped by a third to 1,788, perhaps as a result of increased test preparation.
Unfortunately, families do not learn whether their children will be offered gifted spots until June, after most private schools want down payments on tuition. Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg said in late June that the city may consider a different test for the 2012-13 school year that could yield earlier results and address other concerns about the present system’s fairness. A growing body of research suggests that test results at age four are not reliable predictors of future academic success, but so far at least there is no indication that the city may hold off G & T testing until a later grade.
For now, the system incorporates two tests: the Otis-Lenon School Ability Test (OLSAT), which counts for 75% of the total score, and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA), covering 25%. The OLSAT is designed to measure verbal, quantitative and figural reasoning skills that are most closely related to scholastic achievement, along with a child’s thinking skills (abstract thinking and reasoning). The BSRA is designed to assess a child’s concept knowledge and receptive language skills for school readiness. Or to put it more plainly, it looks at a child’s knowledge of letters, numbers, colors and the like.
Most of the city’s G & T programs are basically autonomous classes within neighborhood schools. There is a small number of schools devoted exclusively to gifted education that accept city-wide applications. They include Andersen (PS 334), and NEST m. To apply for one of the elite citywide programs, a student has to have scored at least in the 97th percentile. The cut-off for the general G & T pool is the 90th percentile. Charter schools are another viable option, especially for families with underperforming neighborhood schools.
Since the city’s first charter school opened in 1999, their ranks have grown from 10 in 2000 to some 125 in 2010, and a recent state law will allow the numbers to expand further. As entry to charter schools is by lottery, parents can increase their chances by applying to as many as possible.
COMMON QUESTIONS:
WHEN TO START THINKING ABOUT IT: A child who will turn 5 by December 31 is eligible for public kindergarten in September of that year. Children born in the fall can go to public school a year before they could start at most private schools. You should identify your neighborhood school a year before your child would enter, go on school tours in the fall, and early in the fall make sure you learn the deadlines for applications, gifted testing, and charter school lotteries.
WHERE TO FIND MORE INFORMATION: Parents can find their zoned school and other options on the city’s Department of Education website. Clara Hemphill’s “New York City’s Best Public Elementary Schools” profiles some 200 schools. Insideschools.org reviews hundreds more schools, gives updates on school policies, and invites parents’ comments.
PRIVATE KINDERGARTEN
Bottom line: Though fewer children have been taking the exam given by the Educational Records Bureau (ERB) for private kindergarten entrance, the economic downturn does not seem to have significantly reduced applications to New York City private schools. Indeed, one sign of the continued demand for private education is the number of new schools that are opening in the city (see sidebar on new schools below).
Antoinette DeLuca, ERB’s executive director for early childhood admissions assessments, said she could not release the number of children taking the kindergarten test at the request of Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York (ISAAGNY), the consortium of private schools that hires ERB to do the testing. However, an ISAAGNY report provided to us by another party shows that 2,867 children took the test for entrance into kindergarten in 2010, down nearly 9 percent from 3,113 at the peak two years ago. But given that not all test takers end up applying to private school, and that at least 2,400 private kindergarten spots exist, the demand does not outstrip supply by nearly as great a margin as it does for gifted public kindergarten programs. The author of “The Manhattan Family Guide To Private Schools and Selective Public Schools,” as well as an admissions consultant with Education First, Victoria Goldman has studied admissions trends for more than two decades and maintains that if the private school data was more accessible, “You would be relieved to know there was a seat for everyone that was tested. It just may not be the one that parents have their heart set on.”
Although ISAAGNY strongly discourages parents from coaching their children for the ERB exam, the widespread availability of practice materials this year made many parents feel pressured to prepare their 4-year-olds, and made several schools question the use of the test. Gabriella Rowe, head of the Mandell School, a longtime popular Upper West Side preschool that in recent years has expanded to include a primary school up to grade 8, even decided to forego the ERB. She says: “It added another wrinkle to an already complicated process and made more confusion for parents.”
If you believe a particular school would be a great fit for your child, you should broach the topic with your preschool director, who often is your main point of contact to the private school beyond your application and school interviews. Some parents worry that a preschool director’s goals may not be completely in sync with their own (since the director has to worry about placing all of her interested families and not just yours). But that concern is misplaced: if a private school expresses interest in a child, any honest school director is going to cultivate that interest, not sabotage it.
COMMON QUESTIONS:
WHEN TO START THINKING ABOUT IT: Most private schools say they want kindergarteners to turn 5 by September 1, but unofficially, many of them have late spring cut off dates. Parents should start to research schools in the winter and spring, so they can go on some school tours in the spring, fill out their applications over the summer, and have them in by the end of September. (Stated application deadlines are in the late-fall to early-winter range, but many schools receive all the applications they can handle by the end of September and then stop accepting them.) Admissions consultant Roxana Reid of Smart City Kids stresses that “getting started early is important,” and advises parents to begin by “reflecting on what really matters to them.”
WHERE TO FIND MORE INFORMATION: Victoria Goldman’s “The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools and Selective Public Schools” profiles 63 independent schools that offer elementary instruction, and lists consultants who help families through the admissions process. School websites typically provide an overview of the school’s philosophy and academic and extracurricular offerings. In addition to nursery school admissions, the Parents League also advises parents on applying to private schools.
A Few NYC Admissions Consultants
Education First
Manhattan Edge
New York Admissions
PEAS (Private Education Advisory Service)
Smart City Kids
School Search NYC
A Few Of The City’s New And Notable Private Schools
Mandell School, 128 West 95th Street, 212-222-2925
Speyer Legacy School, 211 West 61st Street, 212-581-4000
Blue School, 432 Lafayette, Mezzanine, 646-602-7066
The Goddard School, 124 West 24th Street, 800-GODDARD
Bilingual Buds, 180 Riverside Blvd., 212-787-8088
World Class Learning Group
