Cradle-to-College Struggle

Classes may be out for most of the nation's youngsters, but for many parents the plotting and pushing to wedge their children into the right schools is a year-round ordeal. As urban public schools become increasingly flawed by overcrowded classes, poorly prepared teachers and racial imbalance, many young couples are undergoing an ordeal even tougher than the college-admissions scramble; it is the cradle-to-college struggle to get their kids into a big-city private school.

Nowhere is the competition as keen as in New York City, which boasts more (111), and more diverse, private schools than any other city in the country. The rigidly classical Lycee Francais has a curriculum similar to the one used in French schools, while the offbeat Rudolf Steiner School is based on anthroposophical principles. Progressive Dalton gives no marks, teaches anthropology and playwriting to upperclassmen, while prim, socially prominent Hewitt rules that students cannot attend "parties, moving pictures or the theater" on school nights.

Infant Application. The only easy way to gain entrance to most of these schools is by birth, although even admission by legacy is no longer automatic. Buckley, perhaps the most society-conscious of the city's schools for boys, encourages parents to apply when their children are born, and most of the top schools book their classes far in advance on a first-come, first-considered basis. Even acquiring an application form is competitive; Allen-Stevenson, which graduates only a dozen boys a year, does not send a blank unless it gets satisfactory telephoned answers to nine questions. The most important: "Who recommended the school to you?" and "What school is the boy attending now?"

That kind of question, in turn, sets parents off on a preliminary battle to get their children into the best of the city's private nursery schools (cost: $550 a year and up). Chapin, for example, likes graduates of nursery schools run by the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest (irreverent parents dub it "the celestial snooze") and by the Brick Presbyterian Church. Prudent parents apply to at least three nursery schools, since they cannot be sure that they or their child will pass the tough admission interviews. One worried couple hired a tutor to teach their boy how to cope with coloring books.

"Kiss of Death." Even after the proper nursery school, many parents apply to some ten or more private schools, steel themselves again for more interviews. They must step gingerly, since the test of admission is often not so much whether the school is right for the child, but whether the parents are right for the school. The key to acceptance often lies in the references they supply for their child, influential names collected from family friends or at cocktail parties and business lunches. But an admissions director deluged with reference letters may observe the old rule of thumb that "a thick folder indicates a thick boy." An edge is conceded to parents with prominent names or prominent bank accounts; yet any hint that they are trying to buy their way in, explains Henry D. Tiffany Jr., headmaster of Allen-Stevenson, "is practically the kiss of death."

The price of private schooling comes high. Tuition runs up to $900 a year at the Roman Catholic Convent of the Sacred Heart, attended by Caroline Kennedy and housed in the Fifth Avenue palace built by Banker Otto Kahn. Brearley, academically the top school for girls, charges up to $1,650. Then, of course, there are extras: at Hewitt, riding lessons in Central Park cost $165 a year. The price of midmorning orange juice is $15 a year at Saint David's, where the sons of Negro Jazz Pianist Billy Taylor Jr. and Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr., learn italic handwriting with "John-John" Kennedy. In addition, parents are expected to chip in handsomely on the annual fund drives, from which private schools get 20% of their income. The cost of all this leads one school principal to wonder: "I honestly don't know what some families plan to live on."

Manners Over Math. With as many as ten applicants for every pupil who can be admitted, at least a few private schools have been lazily content to teach manners better than math. Some parents whose children have gone to both private and public schools argue that the few good public schools, such as the famed Bronx High School of Science--which are also hard to get into--are as good or better. The real appeal of some private schools, they claim, is parental desire to have their children study ABC's alongside little Rockefellers or Kennedys, and thus put a tiny foot in the door to New York society.

But, as a group the private schools are academically far superior. Most offer small classes (no more than 20), imaginative teaching and tough competition. Brearley selects its girls for their academic promise rather than social prominence, approaches the excellence of such a boarding school for boys as Andover. Buckley, which has attracted generations of Roosevelts, has pioneered a new elementary reading program. The Convent of the Sacred Heart requires its first-graders to study French, memorize such poems as Blake's "Little Lamb, who made thee?", sends its older girls out on social work one afternoon weekly. Fieldston's 660 kids enjoy an 18-acre campus in the Bronx, a curriculum strong in arts, crafts, music and ethics (compulsory every year). Two of the oldest schools in the land, Collegiate (founded in 1638) and Trinity (1709), cling to their traditions of classical schooling, also boast student bodies of high IQ ratings.

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