acandawux

n the quest to find the perfect middle school for her 10-year-old daughter, Aimée Margolis has zig-zagged across Manhattan for 11 school visits, grilled pre-teenagers at a school fair on music classes and the preferred attire at dances, and compiled a dog-eared folder full of notes.

Then there is the bathroom test.

After a 90-minute tour of the Clinton School for Writers and Artists in Chelsea, Ms. Margolis casually slipped away for what appeared to be a quick pit stop. She carefully occupied a stall, waited for a cluster of students to walk in, and listened.

“It gives you a glimpse behind the scenes,” Ms. Margolis explained of her sub rosa research. “At the tour everybody’s ready for you, everybody has a happy face. They say what they want to say, and you hear what they want you to hear.”

As the Bloomberg administration has created hundreds of new schools, centralized the admissions process and publicized the options, a wave of fifth-grade panic is sweeping certain parental precincts. Middle school is seen as a kind of educational black hole where raging hormones, changes in how youngsters learn and a dearth of great teachers can collide to send test scores plummeting.

Many parents fear that picking the wrong school could dash their children’s chances for a top high school or college.

This year, worry that the economic downturn could create an influx of students fleeing private schools has only ratcheted up the anxiety in the city’s wealthier neighborhoods. In the lowest-performing districts, the pressure is more urgent because of a new retention policy that could hold back scores of failing eighth-graders, raising the frightening specter of hallways populated by bearded teenagers. Many parents also fear that impending budget cuts could endanger the arts and sports programs they rely on to captivate even the surliest adolescent.

For the vast majority of parents who send their children to neighborhood elementary schools, fifth grade is the entree into the smorgasbord of school choice; 10 of the city’s 32 districts require applications (rather than automatically assigning students by geography), and most others welcome them. So this is a season when parents obsessed with small classes and seasoned teachers face off with 10-year-olds focused on, say, whether they would be allowed to eat lunch off-campus and what scents waft down hallways.

“We’ve got to find him somewhere where he’s going to blossom,” Agni Zotis said of her shaggy-haired son, Francis Serrano. “This is a very fragile age. Things get introduced. If they’re not directed well, they could get lost.”

Over the past two years, the city has taken steps to standardize middle-school admissions, organizing fairs in each district, printing directories to clarify options and creating a uniform timeline. Applications preprinted with each fifth grader’s test scores and attendance record were distributed this month and are due, with choices ranked, on Jan. 9. For the first time, the applications will be processed using a $9.7 million system being developed by Vanguard Direct for prekindergarten through high school admissions.

But these changes have also highlighted how wildly admissions policies vary between schools and districts.