A Kindergartener Takes the (Gifted) Test

Today, my 4-year-old daughter will be put to the test. Along with thousands of other pre-kindergarten children in schools all over the city, she'll take the Bracken School Readiness Assessment and Otis-Lennon School Ability Test. These tests, administered one-on-one between January 22 and February 15, are the new criteria for admission into the gifted and talented programs of New York public schools. The whole process has been revamped this year — ostensibly to make it fairer and simpler — as children who score in the top third percentile will be eligible for three citywide gifted programs located in Manhattan, and those in the top fifth percentile will be eligible for the gifted programs in the child's particular district.

While I do not know enough about the changes to judge whether they are an improvement, frankly, I'm squeamish and skeptical about any intellectual assessments of children as young as 4 — at least my own tender child. I signed her up back in December, figuring it might be her ticket out of our good (but large) zoned school in Queens — and, perhaps more important, because I didn't want to be the only one of my friends not to give her child every educational opportunity. It's a long-shot opportunity, however, since no G&T programs in our district start in kindergarten, meaning that even if she is deemed gifted this year, she'll have to be in the topmost tier of giftedness, and willing to commute to Manhattan for kindergarten as well.

My storytime-and-blocks-loving little girl is, of course, a genius. Nonetheless, I recognize that in über-competitive New York — where many children read at 3 and where parents exploit business connections to get their offspring into the right preschools — my still-illiterate daughter is unlikely to make the cut. And even if she does, I suspect she might learn more from being in a diverse mainstream class just down the street, rather than a G&T ivory tower a long subway ride away.

My own "gifted" assessment came in second grade, when a psychologist took me into a small room on the second floor of my Pittsburgh elementary school and had me answer a series of logic questions, including one in which I had to explain why it was impossible for someone to have an uphill commute all the way to and from school.

A few weeks later, I began attending a once-a-week gifted-and-talented program called ESP. I no longer recall what the letters stood for — Enriched Scholastic Program? Extra-Smart and Precocious? — but the joke at the time was that we participants, who got to miss regular school every Friday, actually had extra-sensory perception, that we could predict the future, bend spoons, and guess what playing cards others were holding.

Whatever it stood for, ESP was probably not the best use of tax dollars. Predictably, the children who made the cut at my public school were overwhelmingly middle- or upper-middle-class. The ESP activities were more fun than rigorous — at one point, we learned about Japanese holidays, and another time we dressed up as favorite historical characters — and I'm sure it was hard for the children left behind on Fridays, when our teachers, with at least 1/4 of the class missing, could schedule little of importance. (Either my school was a citywide hub for the exceptionally bright, or our program's definition of gifted was considerably more generous than New York's 95th percentile definition.)

While New York's program is doubtless better than Pittsburgh's circa 1978, I dread finding out whether my daughter and her friends are or are not deemed "gifted." Although I don't put a lot of stock in the assessment process, especially considering how widely a small child's performance can vary depending on his or her mood on testing day, I can't avoid my visceral faith in the labels and ranks that tests confer. For all the rhetoric I spouted as a teenager about cultural biases and multiple intelligences, I remember feeling smug when I learned that a seemingly bright peer had scored lower than I had on the SAT. Will my opinion of my daughter change if she is not deemed gifted? Isn't kindergarten a bit early to be deeming children as smart or not, and to be tracking them accordingly?

Then there is the question of preparing for the test: I'm not even talking about test-prep classes or materials, of which a number are available. A friend used Google to find out about one local program that preps pre-K children for the Otis-Lennon. While I was disgusted that such a program exists, it also made me wonder if I were negligent for not having enrolled my own child. The typos and awkward wording on the company's Web site — which promises to "make our students to standout in the crowd" — comforted me, however, as if my superior proofreading abilities could somehow ensure my daughter's success in life.

My main test-preparation question, though, is how to explain this activity to my daughter, who has never taken a test of any kind, and who frequently balks at following instructions. And how do I emphasize the importance of taking the test seriously without making her anxious?

For now, I'm telling her that some grown-ups think children don't know how to do puzzles and games, and that they're having a bunch of children try in order to test that theory. My husband criticizes me for lying, but he doesn't offer an alternative explanation. And it is only one of many white lies I've found myself relying on recently, when I've assured her that people die only when they're old and sick, and that babies are made when moms and dads give each other a "special hug."

I suppose if she is truly "gifted," she will wise up to my tricks before long.

Ms. Wiener is a columnist for the Food & Drink section of The New York Sun. Sara Berman is on maternity leave.