Can preschool really give your child an edge in college admissions 14 years down the road? “My answer is yes and no,” says Lydia Spinelli, director of the prestigious Brick Church preschool. “No one is going to ask you on a college application where you went to nursery school.” But from the right preschool, it’s off to the right kindergarten and right first grade. “Parents do see it as getting on the right track,” she says.
But at what cost? William Doherty, a University of Minnesota sociologist, points to one Texas mother who took her child out of one preschool because of its math program: it taught circles, but not how to measure their diameter. Fitzsimmons says he’s seen vast ethnic and economic diversification among students: two thirds of freshmen come from public schools (and even the private-schoolers aren’t all white). So there is hope for your kid–even if he or she doesn’t make the best preschool and can’t yet define pi.
