Fulton’s public kindergarten screenings are nothing compared to what New York City kids have to go through to get into a public gifted program. Kids in New York have to sit still for a whole hour and answer questions about analogies. Needless to say, few preschoolers can accomplish such a feat without preparation. A plethora of tutoring centers and workbooks have sprung up in response to parents’ demand.

A mother explains why she pays for tutoring:

“It’s quite pricey, but compared to private school, which averages about $20,000 for kindergarten, the price is right,” she said of the tutoring. “I just want the opportunity to have a choice.”

Parents will go to great lengths to have choices, even if it means subjecting their children to SAT-style practice tests at age three. Anyone who’s opposed to drilling preschoolers should support policies that would build more choices into the system. Little kids could relax if the gates to choice schools weren’t so heavily guarded.

(For more about kindergarten, see Matthew Kahn’s post applying mechanism design to the admissions process.)