Agree generally, but this, remember is New York, Manhattan in particular. Upper middle-class parents aren't there for the ordinary "quality of life" stuff. They're clawing their way to the top in hedge funds or PR or retailing or the arts. Their kids in The Apple can't go romping in the verdant backyards and rolling fields of Wisconsin. The alternatives to over-structured activity are confinement in an apartment or playing in traffic. And, it should be needless to say, the idea of one's kid just trotting down to the nearest grammar school and accepting what's on offer there is out of the question. Competition to get the child into someplace decent begins at birth. (And, no, this isn't racist code; its a matter of overcrowding, a good principal or not, how many subways to get there, etc.) It's a whole different life than in Racine or Barneveld.

@ goxewu

Having lived on the East Coast most of my life, I did consider these arguments before writing. But I have to tell you, the idea of simply sending kids to the nearest school (or any public school) is just as unacceptable in less urbanized areas-- including in Stoughton WI where I live. Sure, the levels of violence are lower, but the quality of teaching is just as mediocre. Also, while you present some lovely images of childhood in Wisconsin, they're not very realistic-- getting kids out of the house often means finding an indoor play area/open gym, bookstore train table, riding a city bus, etc. As I recall, there are plenty of similar opportunities in New York-- one is not limited to the dichotomy of over-structured activities vs. playing in traffic. Most toddlers would love to ride the bus or subway with a parent telling them stories, visiting a public library or city playground, museum, etc etc. Opportunities for imaginative play abound in cities. And given all of those amazing (and free) enrichment opportunities that a parent can ensure kids engage in, what happens in the environs of the local public school is much much less important. I think what's most interesting is that New York parents appear convinced otherwise-- not by evidence, but by their cultural mileau.

Sara - just because an article appears in the New York Times does not make it inevitable - just who are "those in power" anyway?
Why do you care how other parents are raising their children? Why do you feel the need to "defend" your choices to your friends? Are you that insecure in your parenting skills?
I am on the other side of the parenting role, enjoying lots of grandbabies. Some advice; do the best you can, follow your instincts, love you kids like crazy. Exceptionally bright children may grow to be pretty average (which is just fine) and the daydreamer may be the next Einstein. Your children may resent the choices you have made, or think you were an wonderful parent....often you get both sentiments over the course of raising them. Your children may get lost along the way and your heart will break. They may make choices you disagree with, but you must respect, as it is their lives and futures, not yours.
I don't know if you have ever read Kahil Gibran - The Prophet. If not, find a copy and read "On Children".
I really hate the bumper stickers that read "I am a proud parent of an honor student at XYZ school". Just once I would love to see one that read "I am the proud parent of a really great, average kid". Why did you feel the need to point out your child is "exceptionally bright"? What if he wasn't - would that be so bad? How would you feel if your son decided college was not the right place for him? What if he wanted to be a plumber, or electrician, or soldier? Just because college is your dream, does not mean it will be his...

Consider the opposite situation. After two three years in a regular classroom at the local elementary school I had my 8 year old tested for the district gifted program. He was several years beyond his peers in math and reading. I was shocked when the test came back..well..average. So I found a copy of sample questions online and asked my son to complete them. Turns out he didn't understand the instructions. He was too shy to ask the tester, a stranger, what to do. Once he understood what was being asked he answered all the sample questions correctly. This was the same situation as the child in the NYT article.

So now there is another opportunity to test. Would going over the instructions be considered coaching? Should I allow him to go in unprepared and miss out on a program that would benefit him tremendously? What to do? What to do?

Before my child entered the public school system I would have agreed with Ms. Goldrick-Rab. Now as the parent of elementary and middle school age children, I see things differently. While you might know what you plan to do at this stage of child rearing, once you are facing the education of your child you may find you have changed your mind. Wait and see.

Entrance exams for kindergarten. How disgusting. It is also something which preys on anxious middle class parents. It is not fashionable today to accept the fact that their children are likely to do well for socioeconomic reasons; that sounds too much like being part of a born-to-rule elite, it is much more comforting to convince yourself that your Johnny and Jane have a natural right to go to Harvard because they are gifted. As we all know gifted children comprise 2% of the population plus your own spawn. Excessive testing simply turns kids into trained seals and selects heavily for conformity rather than original talent. Some refuse to perfom on demand. For example, I horrified postgrad students at Cornell when I was a post-doc there by telling them that my officially rated IQ was 75. I deliberately threw my 5 IQ tests in school. I drew aeroplanes and submarines on the test cards. Fortunately I came from a country which does not use IQ test scores as university entrance criteria.

Here's an idea. Leave New York. In towns and cities all over this country, children go to public schools, for which they don't need to audition, where teachers care about learning, kindness, and inclusion, where there's community, and where everybody plays outside a couple of times a day. The tunnel vision of the east coast elite might make you think that everyone lives that "applying to kindergarten" life, but many of us do not (and our kids are turning out just fine).

Why in the world would anyone want their kid to take a test to go to a school where all the students are likely to be pretty much the same (even one where multi-colored uniformity may substitute for diversity)? The best way to socialize an individual--and a good citizen--is still to provide a variety of companions and experiences. My son was born into the (for 1966) relatively diverse environs of graduate housing at the University of Michigan, went to a socially diverse pre-school in Flint while we were house parents in a student apartment building, attended public schools in semi-rural Mississippi (where we quickly pulled him out of a "gifted" program which somehow did not include some of his brightest/darkest peers), graduated as the then only white student from the Black college where I taught, and completed law school at a Big Ten university. As a boy he often acompanied his mother on activites she directed for girls at YWCAs in Flint and Jackson (and Pittsburgh, if pre-natal experiences count). His ability as an adult to work and move within groups and among individuals differing in age, ethnicity, gender, and other ways is clearly a result of the variety of his experience. The worst thing parents can do is to segregate children from others who are deemed to be "not like us," whatever the nature of the "unlikeness," and to place them into groups which are based on, and will foster a dangerous sense of entitlement.

@mystery345: Is it so horrible that your child scored in the average range on a test? Why do you care so much about it?

Count me as another academic parent who's seen precisely what Ms Goldrick-Rab recounts (in "flyover country", no less!), and is opting out.

It's no accident that New York is the psychiatric treatment capital of the world.

@d_f_b See my comments about being several years ahead and needing to be placed in a more advanced program. The average test scores kept him from that program. That is why I care so much about it.

Unfortunately, cooperative learning is the educational fad for today. All children learn the same things at the same rate. Faster kids can help "pull up" the rest of the group. This is today's system. This system is nationwide. When I was a child we were grouped and those who were more advanced in one area of another were allowed to move faster. No more. I don't want my advanced child to sit and wait for the other children to learn something he learned two year previously. I don't want him to be stuck tutoring the other kids because there is nothing else for him to do. The only way out is through a gifted program.

This system of moving at the same pace has backfired for both my children. One is exceptionally ahead and was bored silly. The other is exceptionally behind and is overwhelmed. It isn't working for either child. I will do whatever it takes to get my kids into the right program. However, most people would agree that I should do what it takes to get my child who is doing poorly into the best program, but I am considered an elitist if I do the same for my advanced child. Why is this?

I hope the birth of your fetus is the beginning of a life of joy and fulfillment.

Heaven knows I'm no expert on the subject, but something like a hundred billion human beings have been born, grown up, and so forth within having the first couple decades of their lives planned out. Of course most of them didn't live where you live, when you live, and so on, but they were born into the same world. Perhaps things have changed so much that it's really necessary (or appropriate, fruitful, beneficial, expedient, whatever) to make such extraordinary arrangements. Perhaps not.

In any case, it's bad enough when you're dealing with a "normal" child. One of the really special things about being the parent of a special-needs child is that, no matter what you do as parents, there will be an army of self-appointed, self-annointed experts lined up to tell you that you are ruining your child's life. It's always possible that it's got to the point where that's the case for all parents, regardless of the child's status.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the advice tendered you by experts is trustworthy in inverse proportion to the prospective financial gain or loss to those experts. When I think back to some of the opinions, theories, conjectures, and plain barefaced lies that were offered to us as objective fact, I marvel that we didn't lose it completely.

Good luck. And don't trust this advice any more than you would anyone else's. From the moment the child is born, you will know her better than anyone else. Especially better than any "experts."

Why are so many parental undies in a bundle over what some people in New York City are doing? Is this somehow a threat to everybody in flyover country, red states, fishing villages, etc.? Those New York parents aren't asking anybody else to do what they're doing, they're just dealing with their situation in what they think is the best way.

Well, maybe it IS a threat, in that entrance exams for kindergarteners is yet another sign that the world is more crowded, faster-moving, more competitive, less forgiving, with more and more powerful and more contradictory forces and closer tolerances at work than [pick your golden years]. It's not going to any LESS this way. It's certainly not going to revert back to 1964 Levittown or 1971 Costa Mesa or even 1980 Kearney, Nebraska.

Parallel: Remember when you got half A's, half B's and a couple of C's in high school, maybe joined one club or played one sport, otherwise hung out with your friends, simply got a good night's sleep before the SAT's, and easily got into the big state U.? That's over, too.