Malcolm stared at me. “Well, yeah, El. And other places around the country. Wherever there’s room. Think of it as a kind of Outward Bound. Get the kids out of the crowded city and into the fresh air. They’ll thrive.”
“More like Downward Bound,” I said, not holding back my sarcasm. “Anyway, what you mean is wherever land is cheap, right? And you’re telling me this was your idea?”
I went to bed early that night, hoping I’d be asleep before Malcolm came in.
SEVEN
I put Malcolm and Madeleine and the whole stinking Department of Education behind me, and now I’m back on what used to be Sarah Green’s neat brick path. It looks like a land mine went off.
“You said she was doing fine,” Sarah screams. “Fine! Every single report we got said her Q was almost perfect.”
“It was perfect, actually,” I said.
“Well, it isn’t now. For some reason. Now she’s on her way to fucking Kansas?” She laughs, but it’s not a funny laugh. “Kansas. To a state school with a year-round schedule.” Every one of her words is the verbal equivalent of screaming caps. I don’t even try to interrupt.
“Oh, right, they tell us we can come visit once a quarter. Do you have any idea how much leave David and I have to take to fly to Kansas four times a year? And that’s if we can get the extra time off work. That’s if we want to see our own Qs take a nosedive, which means Jonathan’s Q gets hit, and he’s already in a green school. For a day, Elena. One single day with our daughter. They used to send the kids home for Christmas. Thanksgiving every other year. Summer.”
“You were on the board when the new schedules were approved,” I say.
Sarah stutters and goes silent. Then, she turns and makes for her front door. Her hair is in wet ropes down her back, and the terry-cloth robe is as sodden as a drowned cat. She spins fast and looks at me, hard. “I guess you’ll have more time for your top two percent now, El. Good luck with them.”
Her words hit me like a slap in the face, but it’s a reactionary slap, a quid pro quo return on the slap I’d just served her.
I remember when the schedule changes happened. Another night on the sofa with Malcolm, another press conference with Madeleine Sinclair in her blue power suit and blond bob and that saccharine smile that makes you feel like you’re in kindergarten all over again and need shit explained to you in small words. I remember the reduction in vacation time being another one of Malcolm’s brainchildren.
I also remember parents like Sarah and David Green supporting it.
As little as five years ago, participation in the tier system wasn’t compulsory, not exactly. Instead, a guideline came from Washington. A suggestion that parents pay close attention to their children’s individual needs. This was followed by another, and then by another dozen, all of them coldly clinical and mathematical.
Parents of children with Q scores below eight points are encouraged to consider yellow schools.
Top-tier systems may not be in your offspring’s best interest. Don’t push them!
A panel of two dozen experts has concluded that tier separation benefits everyone.
Of course, there was pushback—PTA meetings where infuriated parents stood up and interrupted the barrage of suggestions, threatening to homeschool their seventh-graders rather than subject them to the constant pressure of tests. The opt-out culture of parents storming from assemblies and plucking their kids from school had started to take a tenuous foothold.
But only in some neighborhoods. Not in ours. Not in Sarah Green’s.
And then the PTA meetings were supplanted by board meetings. The guidelines became directives; the directives included fines for truancy, taxes disguised as penalties, trickle-down effects on siblings’ Q scores. Homeschooling requirements became more restrictive than gun laws, and the forms were ever-changing. A line left blank or a code entered incorrectly meant a red Declined—not subject to appeal stamp from the school superintendent’s office. I wonder sometimes where they found all that red ink.
Women like Sarah Green had their own way, campaigning for a different type of pressure,