New York Poised To Force Yeshivos To Meet Education Standards

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New York state officials on Friday proposed new rules that would require private schools to prove they are meeting state education standards, a long-awaited response to allegations that certain yeshivos are failing to deliver lessons in core subjects such as English, math and science.

Schools that refuse to comply could lose their designation for meeting the state’s compulsory education requirements. And school districts that fail to monitor the private schools in their boundaries could lose state funding, officials said.

The rules apply to all private schools, religious and not, but they come in response to years of accusations that many Chassidic Jewish communities spend virtually all of their time studying Torah and Talmud, religious texts, leaving children without the education that state law requires they be offered in English, math, science and social studies, along with a handful of other topics.

State officials said they expect schools and local districts to work together to demonstrate schools are meeting the required benchmarks. That may prove optimistic given the yeshivas’ contention that the entire oversight process is invalid and their resistance to past investigations and questioning.

The new regulations, which are expected to be approved this week by the state Board of Regents, set up a fresh test of religious liberty and schooling, and people on both sides of the debate predicted the dispute will be appealed in court, possibly to the highest levels.

They also are the culmination of a decade-long campaign led by Naftuli Moster, who attended a Chassidic yeshiva in Brooklyn as a child. Angry about the substandard education he said he received, in 2012 he founded the group Young Advocates for Fair Education, or Yaffed, to press for investigations and enforcement.

“Tens of thousands of children have been – and continue to be – denied a basic education in dozens of ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas, primarily in Hasidic boys’ schools, across New York,” he said in a statement Friday. “In high schools they provide ZERO secular instruction. There is no English, no math, no science, no social studies. Nothing.”

Some Chassidic leaders in New York, defending their schools, have lashed out at the effort to monitor curriculums and lessons, calling it an infringement on the right to offer religious education as they see fit. Parents, they say, are entitled to send their children to schools that are consistent with their values and beliefs.

Pearls, a coalition of yeshivas in New York that has been vocal on this issue, described the regulation as an effort to “dictate” curriculum and faculty.

“Those who want State control can choose the public schools,” the group said in a statement on Friday. And sounding a defiant note, it added: “Parents in New York have been choosing a yeshiva education for more than 120 years, and will continue to do so, with or without the blessing or support of State leaders in Albany.”

Still, the statement did not refute the contention that these schools lack instruction in required subjects.

Critics say the lack of enforcement to date punishes children who are never taught basic skills such as how to read and write in English, do basic math or understand the larger world around them.

In 2019, after a long delay that city investigators found was tied to political interference, the New York Department of Education found 26 of the 28 yeshivas it examined were not meeting standards.

New York state’s efforts have also been drawn out partly because a court required the education agency to put these rules into formal regulations, as opposed to leaving them as mere guidance. Officials said they received some 350,000 public comments, most of them expressing “philosophical opposition” to state regulation of nonpublic schools.

“The regulation respects that parents have a constitutional right to send their children to religious schools, and that we respect the world views of those schools,” said Jim Balwin, senior deputy commission for education policy in New York. “Working together, we are seeking to ensure that all students will receive the education to which they are entitled.”

Since 1895, New York state law has required that children attending nonpublic schools be provided education that is “substantially equivalent” to that given to like-aged children at their local public schools. Private and religious schools are free to offer instruction on additional topics, but they must teach core subjects.

Moster said that in many elementary and middle schools, students at these yeshivas may have 90 minutes of secular education each day. In high school, girls learn some secular subjects, he said, but boys, who attend separate schools, study only ancient Jewish texts. All classes are conducted in Yiddish, with many students graduating without functional English even though they have lived in New York for their entire lives. They know little about secular history, and don’t even study the Holocaust, he said.

The logic, he said, is that secular learning is not needed to function and thrive in the insular Chassidic community. “Every boy is groomed and destined to be a rabbi of some sort,” he said.

He estimated that nearly 100 Chassidic yeshivas in New York are out of compliance with state standards.

Other Jewish schools teach a broader range of topics. Jewish day schools, for instance, offer both religious and secular education.

Under the new regulations, nonpublic schools will have several options for demonstrating that they are offering a substantially equivalent education. Schools that are accredited by a recognized agency, for instance, or that participate in the International Baccalaureate program will automatically be considered in compliance.

But the Chassidic schools at the center of the controversy are not likely to qualify under the pathways offered and, if not, the local school districts will be responsible for ascertaining their compliance with the rules. State officials emphasized on Friday that districts have long been tasked with this responsibility under the law, though these provisions were ignored for decades.

“We think enforcement is necessary,” Moster said Friday. He said that yeshivas deemed to no longer be schools would lose funding that they rely on, “so that funding is itself the carrot and the stick.”

The regulations require the instruction be offered in math, science, English language arts and social studies, by a competent teacher and in English. Students with limited English skills must be provided instructional programs.

New York state law also requires instruction in several other areas, and the regulation requires nonpublic schools to show they are delivering it. These include patriotism and citizenship; the history and meaning of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the New York State Constitution; physical education; health education regarding alcohol, drugs and tobacco, and injury prevention.

The number of students studying at Chassidic yeshivas has been growing at a clip. Even as total student population in New York state fell, enrollment in Jewish schools overall climbed 62.6 percent since 2000, the Manhattan Institute found in a 2020 report. Most of the growth has been in Chassidic schools, which educated more than 90,000 students in 2018, Yaffed reported.

(c) 2022, The Washington Post · Laura Meckler 


10 COMMENTS

  1. One thing is for sure, the self-hating Jews who are behind this, including the loser and losers who went through the system, but blame yeshivas for their ineptness, are going straight to Gehenim.

    These are people who can take responsibility for themselves. Either for something that they could have done something about or if it’s a learning issue, that they refuse to admit but want to blame it on somebody else.

  2. We must do all we can to make sure Kathy Hochul does NOT become the Governor. Lee Zeldin is not perfect but he is clearly head and shoulders above Hochul as far as supporting the needs and sensitivities of the Frum community. My family and I will all be voting for Lee Zeldin be”h.

  3. Core subjects: Eng, math, science. Sounds safe and simple. But who knows what they want to push down the throats of our heilige yiddishe kinder? They probably want to enforce their filthy books too.

  4. Why doesn’t every Mosod, Leader, Rabbi etc. proclaim that every individual should be registered to vote.

    Every vote should go for the opponent Zeldin!

    We should have the very same campaign we have for other monetary issues – for a voting drive
    I.e.

    Every Rabbi should announce before Krias Hatorah etc the importance of this גזירה!

    ACTIONS TO IMPLEMENT:

    A) Every shul should have someone with a Tablet) Notebook/Laptop to register every single person.

    B) make sure everyone knows where and what to vote.

    C) final weeks of registration; to again ask and confirm that every person is registered.

    D) Shabbos before and day of , remind, by every means of communication: GO out and VOTE!

    H. Is taking our votes for granted!

  5. “They know little about secular history, and don’t even study the Holocaust, he said.”

    This one was funny. Their great-grandparents are Holocaust survivors and their families are well aware of the Holocaust (though not of the Zionist treachery and evil during the Holocaust, but that isn’t studied anyways).

  6. There are plenty of Satmar and other chareidim who became rich without “core” subjects – richer than many who go for years to university.

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