The Early Education Racket
If you are reading this article, your kid probably doesn’t need preschool.
To go to preschool or not to go to preschool ... ?
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One morning last September, my husband dragged himself out of bed at 5 a.m. and rode his bike to a nearby preschool. The moonlit block was empty but for the first seeds of a sleepy line forming outside the school’s doors—he was the sixth person to join it. By 8 a.m., the line stretched all the way down the block and disappeared around the corner. Eventually, my husband was invited inside, where he handed a stranger an application and a check for $50 and promptly left. So began our son’s preschool application process for the 2013/2014 academic year, 12 months in advance.
It wouldn’t be New York if preschool admissions, or any admissions, were easy. But yearlong pre-preschool stress-fests are now sweeping the nation, with upper-middle-class parents ranking schools and agonizing over which educational “philosophy” is right for their kid, even as research suggests that if you have the time and money to argue