"Mom? When is my Happy Goodbye Day?" my son Dylan asks, gripping my hand as we walk from his daycare center to my car, through the shimmering heat of a late August afternoon. "Maybe next summer," I say. "Next sum-mer," he repeats slowly. "Is that soon?" "Sort of," I tell him. In the ensuing months, Dylan asks this same question numerous times. He has seen several of his friends leave his class at the daycare for the new and uncharted territories of real school, has participated in the ritual party and sendoff ("Happy Goodbye Day"), and seems eager to abandon the comfortable nest of daycare for new and more sophisticated venues. As my own schedule intensifies and my exhaustion increases over the course of the fall, I begin to exploit his interest to my advantage, "Dylan! If you don't (fill in the blank), you won't get to go to a Big Boy School," or, worse, "Do you think that they will tolerate that kind of behavior in Big Boy School? You just may need to spend another year in daycare…" Needless to say, my strategy worked—perhaps too well.

This year, my husband and I faced the daunting challenge of trying to get our son into one of the few viable public schools in New Orleans Parish for academic year 2007-2008. While, given his birth date in December, Dylan had the option of spending a second year at the daycare he has attended since he was eight months old, my husband and I thought it better, more challenging and, not insignificantly, more affordable (free), to send him to a public school Pre-K program.

So, last October, I began to do research on options for Dylan. What materialized was fairly limited. The public school system in New Orleans is still, for the most part, unfortunately, segregated by race and class. Most white parents and parents of color with means, send their children to private or parochial schools (which can mean an investment of up to $12,000 a year, on the lower school level, and even more for high school). The vast majority of public schools in New Orleans are, and have been historically (or, for the past few decades since desegregation), predominantly black, with very few resources (many do without textbooks, are led by teachers without credentials, and are housed in decrepit, hazardous, and, at times, un-air-conditioned facilities). Poor homes for poor kids. The result is a largely unruly and often violent student body. This phenomenon is, in part, the consequence of all those parents who invest money in parochial and private schools rather than in resources for and improvements on inner-city public schools. It is also the consequence, historically, of those individuals at the top of the system (school board members and administrators) who treat themselves and their colleagues to kickbacks rather than investing funds in upgrading the schools over which they preside. All told, it's a sadly corrupt system, and many parents (typically white, of course) have chosen either to move outside of the city to the consoling suburbia of nearby Jefferson Parish, or to educate their children and raise their families elsewhere.

Since the storm, there have been small improvements. Many of the schools formerly under the auspices of the NO public school board, including those few schools that have a good reputation, have become charter schools. In addition, various universities in the area have "partnered" with various schools. Unfortunately, despite a reduced population, the difficulty of getting one's child into one of the few promising schools in the city remains significant.

Last October, I identified as one viable option for Dylan a Montessori school located conveniently uptown near Loyola, where my husband teaches, with a Pre-K class for three- to five-year olds. What I heard about the school was that its reputation has varied over the years but that, with recent training from outside educators in the Montessori method, its quality had improved. And, because Dylan had experienced and done well in a Montessori school in Houston during our evacuation, I was eager to try it.

When I visited their website, however, I learned, or was given the impression, that this particular Pre-K was, in fact, a gifted Pre-K only and that Dylan would require special testing. Testing for a three-year old? The idea was at once intimidating and alarming. Can you really, clearly determine that a three-year old is gifted? I wondered. Moreover, I worried, how would I feel if the results of Dylan's test indicated that he was not, in fact, gifted? I chewed on this thought for a couple of weeks, talking out my anxiety with sympathetic friends and colleagues, before picking up the phone to schedule an appointment with a designated tester. What I learned was that, in order to make the school's January deadline, I would need to have Dylan tested in early December. We had approximately two weeks in which to prepare.

I had no idea of what to expect from the test; all I knew was that one part was designated "Educational" and the other part "Developmental." Nevertheless, Dylan and I began a rigorous crash course on letters and numbers. At every possible opportunity, I whipped out his flash cards. Leisurely bedtime stories were replaced by disciplined sessions of identification and recitation. I wrinkled my brow and bit my lip each time Dylan confused the letters "K" and "R" or drew a blank at the letter Y. Complained bitterly at the confounding misnomer "double U" for the letter "W" (why, I wondered, perhaps for the first time in my life, was the word not "double V"?). Dylan's grasp of numbers was hit and miss; while in one session he would count confidently to 15, in another he might stare vacantly at the 6, or even 6 and 7, and yawn, "What? What letter is that?"

While I refrained from referring to that for which we had prepared as a "test," I did tell Dylan that he would meet two ladies who would ask him questions and that it was important that he pay attention and answer as best he could, if, indeed, he wanted to go to a Big Boy School. Moreover, I added, if he did his very best, he might be rewarded with a toy.

On the morning of the test, my anxiety was so acute that I could barely finish my coffee. I struggled to assume an attitude of carefreeness as we drove to the suburban home of his tester. I rang the doorbell of a one-story brick bungalow and tried to smile reassuringly at Dylan whose hand I clutched tightly. We were greeted by a pleasant older woman and her two miniature collies, and ushered into a cool room with thick carpets and invitingly soft furniture that beckoned us to sit and relax. Within minutes, her partner appeared, another kindly older woman, who welcomed us cheerfully. Dylan warmed readily to both of the women, and the two dogs, and was soon led by one of them into another room while I sank into the sofa and entertained questions by the other about why I felt that Dylan is gifted. From the other room, I could hear the gentle sounds of the tester presenting Dylan with questions and the eager sounds of his responses, punctuated by laughter and commentary. After the woman with whom I conversed left to administer her part of the test, I paged through the benign pages of a Home and Garden magazine and gazed out the window at the woman's lush backyard. I reflected on how much easier this seemed than what I had imagined. When Dylan and his testers emerged, all smiles—like newfound friends, I wrote them a check and thanked them for their time. I would, they assured me, receive a phone call that very afternoon with a verdict and scores. As we were leaving, I hugged Dylan and commended him on his effort. "Now do I get a toy?" he asked placidly, as if to redirect my attention to the real purpose of our visit.

I spent the afternoon pacing the rooms of our house before I heard the phone ring. The news was positive. Dylan, the tester informed me, had qualified as gifted on "IQ" alone and definitely qualified on the basis of both parts of the test. Registering some surprise that the "Education" section of the test was, in fact, an IQ test (that any information obtained within the space of fifteen minutes could possibly measure a child's IQ), I was, nevertheless, thrilled. My child was smart. Not only was he smart, he was "GIFTED." With this new label tucked in the pocket of my proverbial apron, I confidently completed rest of the school's application and arrived, on the day of its' January deadline, documents in hand. At the orientation I learned that those children who had attended a Montessori School previously would be admitted automatically, the rest subject to a lottery system. He is, I told myself and my husband, a shoe-in, both as gifted and as a former Montessori student, however briefly.

I was crushed by the letter that arrived in the mail one month later. Tearing into the envelope containing the school's insignia and flipping it open, I read aloud to my husband that Dylan had been placed on the waiting list of the "second tier." His less than encouraging lottery number was 78. I wondered how I would ever explain to Dylan why, after so much ado, he would not be having his Happy Goodbye Day this year, and would not be going to Big Boy School. Casting the letter aside, I buried my face in my hands and cried, as much out of sheer exhaustion as sadness. One might have thought that our son had been rejected by Harvard.

In fact, the process of getting one's child admitted into the right school, let alone an affordable one, in New Orleans does feel similar to the process of applying to college—complicated and competitive. In contrast, the neighborhood schools and yellow school buses of my own childhood in Charlottesville, Virginia seem comparatively so simple and right. The life and education to which every child should be entitled. I fumed about the class inequity and corruption of New Orleans as I debated how and when to deliver the news to my son.

In the meantime, because I did not feel capable of deliberate and diplomatic communication, Chris put on nice pair of pants and a jacket and went to the school in person, to protest Dylan's placement and to volunteer our time at the school. A week later we received another letter from the school announcing that Dylan was now number 7 on the waiting list and that we would be hearing from them in early May.

I, however, could not quite feel good about this school or its system, in the knowledge both that they had failed to recognize Dylan's carefully prepared application and that some other child's position on the list had so easily been usurped. I began again to talk with friends and colleagues and learned of a second option, for which we were uniquely suited. A school formerly located in the flooded neighborhood of Lakeview, now temporarily housed in a building uptown, had opened its doors to non-Lakeview residents, and was granting special consideration to children whose parents were affiliated with the University of New Orleans with which it had partnered after the storm. The school had a good reputation, a gifted in the arts program and a French immersion program (something we had often considered for Dylan). And I was an English Instructor at UNO. Although it was a month before their March deadline, I lost no time in compiling Dylan's documents anew and hand delivering them to the administration.

Within a month and a half, we had his acceptance letter in hand. Two weeks later, Chris and I stood, visitors in the Pre-K class to which Dylan had been accepted, and watched an energetic French instructor lead a small, ethnically diverse class, in a recitation of the French alphabet, followed the cheerful rendition of a French song. The next day I signed and mailed our acceptance letter. I could finally relax, knowing that the next time Dylan asked when his Happy Goodbye Day would be, I would be able to answer him.