Brad Lander, the incoming New York City comptroller, vowed to do everything in his power to coax Orthodox yeshivos to teach a secular curriculum, Ben Sales reports for JTA
Lander, who is Jewish and a Democrat, discussed the issue Thursday night in a virtual Q-and-A with the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive policy group he co-founded.
The question of whether yeshivos should be forced to teach math, English and other secular subjects has roiled city and state government for years. The state requires private schools to teach a curriculum that is “at least substantially equivalent” to public school education. Last month, the state announced that it would issue updated regulations relating to that law.
“The state law is very clear that all schools, including private and parochial schools, have an obligation to deliver substantially comparable and competent secular education, especially where the city is contracting with those schools for transportation and books,” Lander said. “It is a responsibility of the city as a whole and the comptroller in particular to be paying attention, and audit and make sure those obligations are being met.”
As comptroller — a position he described partly as the city’s “chief accountability officer” — Lander will be able to audit yeshivas and discover which ones are falling short of the state’s standards. But he added that he does not have the power to force them to change their curricula, and hopes to proceed in a way that paves a “pathway to compliance.”
“You try to be strategic in the use of the resources, and the goal of that work is to help win change, not just do a ‘gotcha’ audit that gets a headline on the cover of the Times,” he said. “This is critical. Making sure that all our schools, including our yeshivas, provide the education that our kids need and deserve is part of our job together and one that I’m going to be spending time on.”
{Matzav.com}
This Lander was always a thorn in the side of the Frum community.
Mr. Lander was my council-member. He is so left, woke and progressive he makes deblasio look like a right wing conservative. Mr. Lander do the job you were elected to do and leave us alone.
Our Yeshiva system gives the students the most important skill they need to succeed – thinking skills. Every beis medrish Bocher is expected to be able to write chidushai Torah.The argument that chaidishe kids can’t speak English is a red herring since this has nothing with the schools. As long as parents speak to their children exclusively Yiddish and the culture frowns on speaking English nothing will change in this area no matter what the state does.
Maybe when they’ll clean up the filth from the secular education and textbooks, yeshivos will be able to learn the basics.
Halevei the NYC Public School students should score year-after-year as high on all State-mandated standardized test (4th Grade, 8th Grade, Regents, etc.) and on the voluntary tests such as SATs and ACTs as do the average Yeshivah student. It has been shown time-and time-again that the shorter secular studies programs required by the vast majority of the Yeshivos, Beis Yaakovs, and Hebrew Day Schools in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens out-perform their population in the Public School system. Whether it is because less time is wasted or because the average “Yeshivah Family” offers less distractions, or place a greater emphasis on learning and studying in general, is the subject, perhaps, for a Sociology Thesis, but fact are facts.
reminds me of a famous quote by the British poetess Edith Sitwell:
“I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.”