Three hundred plus 7th grade students will be sitting for our entrance exam this morning. So it's Sunday morning at 6:15am and I'm writing a quick post before I go to school.  The entrance exam is a system--just like any private school in the States.  Only I'm a product of public schools in the Sates and today, I find myself in Bulgaria so it's a system that I don't really <em>get</em>.

This spring seventh graders all over the country will be taking entrance exams not only for the handful of private schools that exist in this country but also for all of the best public schools--math schools, language schools, art schools you name it.  If I understand everything correctly, this is the moment they've been preparing for since their first day of elementary school and over the past year with expensive private lessons.

Today, students will take a test that I know nothing about. It's may or may not surprise my American readers but the entire test is in Bulgarian. <!--more--> Students don't have to know any English to be admitted to the school rather we admit students and then give them an English placement test later. All of this seems very fair to me. And a piece of me is looking forward to seeing nervous students and parents when I get to school today.

But it hasn't always been this way.  Twenty years ago, as I understand it, before the changes, placement at the best schools (the First English Language School included--where I taught last year) was gained by sitting for an entrance exam, family connections to the party and expensive private lessons from teachers in the know.  The process which on the surface has a semblance of fairness was far from fair. This is not to say that in the past no deserving students made into these schools, I am sure they did but access to the best schools was not a transparent process.

The whole thing makes me realize how lucky I am. How lucky I am to be a product of good public schools.  Sure I was also lucky to be born to well educated middle class parents for whom education is a priority and I know that my parents bought houses in good neighborhoods with good schools but this is different.

I never felt the kind of pressure to succeed on a single test that the students today I am sure will feel. My parents didn't pay tutors thousands of dollars to prepare for an exam (or a series of entrance exams at cities all over the city).

What is probably the most terrifying about this whole thing is that the quality of the schools in Sofia runs the gamete from excellent to questionable.  This realization make my stomach sink.  I've spent most of my life with this single belief, no matter what you've always got your education. It's the one thing that no one can take from you unless you never get it in the first place.

So this morning before going to school to help administer the exam, which I know nothing, I repeat <span style="text-decoration:underline;">nothing</span> about, I am left to think about implicit and explicit <em>value</em> of eduction.  And what an education <em>costs</em>.