New York – The quality of secular studies offered by New York’s yeshivas and day schools has come under relentless and unfair attack during the last few years – and now new guidelines for private schools issued by the State Education Department are creating unprecedented confusion and concern on the part of educators, parents, and community leaders.
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In late November, State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia took the unprecedented step of issuing new, onerous guidelines that require a significant number of secular courses to be taught, give the school district control over teacher’s accreditation, and mandate inspections from public school officials. If not abided by, the guidelines threaten the loss of student-based funding, school transportation, and even eventual closure.
While we can all agree that every child deserves a sound basic education, these new guidelines step far beyond that. They are intrusive, and subvert a private school’s right to control their own curriculum and the culture in their schools.
In the Jewish community, parents take on the often hefty burden of paying yeshiva tuition because we want to ensure that we have some semblance of control over the environment in which our children are spending most of their days. We do our due diligence in ensuring that our children are receiving a good education that will prepare them for a successful future. Most importantly, it is our absolute right as parents to choose where we send our children for school.
These new guidelines are not just affecting yeshivas and Jewish day schools. Muslim and Catholic leaders have also joined in condemning them, with the New York State Catholic Conference going so far as to direct all of the state’s Catholic schools to not participate in “any review carried out by local public school officials.”
The New York Court of Appeals determined in 1948 that “private schools have a constitutional right to exist, and parents have a constitutional right to send their children to such schools.” Depriving such schools of the right to shape their curricula in line with their religious and cultural values would essentially remove the “private” in “private schools”.
It is the tradition of the Jewish people, since the days when Yaakov Avinu sent his son Yehuda ahead to Egypt to establish a yeshiva, that we educate our children according to our teachings as a method of securing our nation’s endurance. Maintaining the independence of our schools is absolutely critical, and allowing the State to overstep their bounds and infringe upon our religious institutions sets a dangerous precedent.
Today, they want to control what we teach in our yeshivas. If we don’t fight back, what will tomorrow bring?
It is hard to figure what is unfair about insisting Jewish kids learn how to speak English and get a job.
To be fair, this campaign has nothing to do with education. This is a group of ex orthodox people with an axe to grind on a mission to hurt and destroy everything from their past.
It’s outrageous that they got the ear of the education department.
I wonder if Chaim himself would have gotten as far as he is now, with an education in a Chahdic school.
The disingenuous nature of some comments here is startling.
Anyone who has had children in most chareidishe yeshivas, and who him or herself has had a good secular education, knows fully well that most graduates receive no or a materially inadequate education in American history and basic legal structures, analytical writing, higher level math, etc…not to mention sciences.
The girls in the “good” Brooklyn Beis Yaakovs don’t even get the text analysis skills the boys get from Shas.
So twiddle your thumbs chaverim…the need for education reform is striking.
I don’t care about the subjects taught. But everyone in the country should be taught to speak and write in the language of the country.
No, Councilman Deutsch, that is not correct. You statement that “it is our absolute right as parents to choose where we send our children for school” isn’t legally correct. Yes, as parents we have the right to choose, but the law does demand an education baseline and parental choice only applies insofar as it adheres to that.
The bigger issue is that the broad statements defending yeshiva education tend to be highly disingenuous. “New York’s yeshivas and day schools” are not a monolithic entity and encompass Day Schools that do indeed offer General Studies as well as Chassidish institutions that teach only in Yiddish and offer little to none General Studies. The numerous statements about our students doing better in standardized tests than do their public school peers is basically saying “leave Yeshivas that don’t offer General Studies alone as there are other schools that do offer indeed General Studies”. And because we’ve lumped all Yeshivas and Day Schools together, the swinging axe threatens them all.
I went to yeshiva,I went on to graduate with a engineering degree, I worked for various insurance companies and the City of NY, never had an issue communicating with my co workers or getting my job done
Says the guy who didn’t graduate high school and got married at 18 despite not being a hasid
I am reading many posts referring to the posters children having done OK in life.
The issue does not pertain to those that attended Yeshiva in the 60’s or even 90’s. It is the situation today which is the factor. Our children’s education is not the same as the previous generation’s. Many of us attended the 12th grade while in many cases, secular studies are skipped in the 12th grade.
i have 8 children who graduated yeshiva,cheder,talmid torah
# 1 is a mortgage broker and averages $275,000 a year
# 2 is in special ed and makes 90,000
# 3 is in construction and is b”h very successful
# 4 is Insurance broker and does over $300,000 a year
# 5 owns a business and making parnassah
# 6 is running a major plant and averages $2500 a week
# 7 is 1/2 day in kolel and the other half dealing real estate
# 8 is working in a office as secretary and waiting for her basherte.
My next door neighbor which is a Goy has 4 kids
# 1 works for Sanitation
# 2 is in Drug Rehab
# 3 got killed in a robbery
# 4 is in Drug rehab
Would ANY NYS agency ever deny monetary aid of ANY sort to an illegal, who will never ever learn to speak english, let alone go to school?
Doubt it.
NYS Liberal double standard, driven by our own self hating jews.
Let’s dispell a common myth
People say viluzhin closed down bec of secular studies .
Not true
Viluzhin actually gave in. It was only an issue when they forced it to be the main subject / study of the day .
And there was a fight with the mir plus in house fighting too
What’s terrible is that the mosdos kicked out perfectly healthy unvacinated children from school on the recommendations of the city, that gave legitimacy to the city that they have a saying in our mosdos, all menahilm/minehalos so are ignorant to realize that they just emolded the city that we are giving in to their demands.