The New York state board voted Tuesday for the first time to require private schools to prove they teach English, math and other core subjects or risk losing government funding. .
The adoption of new regulations by the board that oversees the state’s education departments has for years essentially freed Hasidic Judaism to provide little or no secular education while raising public funds. It can be a turning point for schools.
State education officials have been considering the move for years, and while more than 100 boys’ schools run by Hasidic Jewish communities have raised $1 billion in public funding in recent years, it leaves generations of students The vote came days after The New York Times reported that it was robbing the of basic education. In Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley he found that order, with corporal punishment, was regularly enforced in segregated schools with more than 50,000 boys. The report sparked outcry from New York state officials, with many pointing to new state regulations as a first step.
A rule enacted Tuesday prompted state officials to clarify how to enforce a 100-year-old law that requires private schools to provide an education equivalent to that offered in public schools. It was at least the third rule drafted by the board since its inception in 2018. The process began after the state received complaints about Hasidic schools known as ‘yesivas’, with former students and parents saying the schools did not provide basic secular education.
“It is unconscionable to think that there are young people in schools who do not have a quality education,” said Board of Regents President Lester Young, who said the state could “make business sense” by keeping private schools up to academic standards. I will,” he added.
However, whether the rules have an impact depends on enforcement, and enforcement of the guidelines rests largely with local school districts, leaving the potential for guidelines to be ineffective or unevenly applied. increase.
Unlike previous versions of the rules, the rules passed Tuesday do not impose a minimum requirement for hours of instruction in non-religious subjects. Nor does it give a clear timeline for complying with educational requirements if the school does not provide basic education.
Instead, schools can operate without penalty as long as education officials believe the school is making a good faith effort to improve. State officials have not defined what such an effort would look like.
In a background briefing with reporters last week, a senior state education official repeatedly avoided questions about what would happen to schools found to be out of compliance.
While schools could lose funding, officials also said local school districts, rather than individual institutions, could face financial penalties. It did not disclose whether any schools could be closed for violations.
Timeline: Surveillance of Hasidic Schools in New York
State law requires all private schools to provide an education equivalent to public schools. In 2015, the New York City Department of Education announced that it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in Hasidic Jewish community schools. The investigation timeline is as follows:
Still, those in favor of a more secular education in Hasidic schools applauded the vote.
“Today, the New York State Department of Education and its Board of Regents took a major step forward to ensure that all children attending nonpublic schools get the education they deserve.” Advocate for Equitable Education .
Moster and others have been raising the issue for a decade, but city and state officials have failed to act, partly due to the influence of Hasidic community leaders. These leaders urged their supporters to vote as a bloc, making protecting schools a top political priority.
Members of the Hasidic community, a deeply religious group struggling to cut themselves off from the outside world, have voiced fierce opposition for months ahead of Tuesday’s board meeting. , Hundreds of thousands of letters of protest flooded state officials. The day before the vote, those who opposed the rule protested outside the State Capitol, holding placards that read, “We will sit in jail, not change the education of our children.”
Guardians for Education and Religious Freedom in Schools, a group of Hasidic leaders and school advocates, said: statement. “New York parents have chosen yeshiva education for over 120 years of her life and are proud of the successful results.”
Members of the Hasidic community weren’t the only ones unhappy with the new rules. Nathaniel Styer, spokesman for the New York City school system, said the city would impose additional enforcement duties on officials from the city’s Department of Education, forcing them to inspect private schools while juggling public school responsibilities.
“We believe these regulations are putting an undue burden on our public school system,” Steier said, adding that the Department of Education will implement the regulations.
The city’s investigation into the education of dozens of Hasidic yeshivas in Brooklyn, spanning seven years and two mayoral administrations, is still not complete, but Mayor Eric Adams said last week through a spokesman that the investigation was in the final stages. Some city officials tasked with visiting yeshivas said they were not trained to inspect schools and received little guidance from the state on how to do so.
Under the rules passed Tuesday, schools can choose from a menu of options to show they are complying with the law. They can show progress on the state’s standardized exams — The Times found that Hasidic boys’ schools have the lowest test scores statewide.
Schools can also demonstrate compliance by obtaining accreditation from an approved external organization. This has raised concerns among some activists who fear the Hasidic community could set up its own accreditation body.
Schools that cannot demonstrate compliance with the law will have to allow local school district officials to visit the school by the summer of 2025, and authorities will determine whether the school is providing the minimum required education. increase.
The Regulation has come a long way to enactment. State education officials announced the first proposal four years before him, but in 2019 a judge rejected it over procedural issues. In 2020, the state withdrew another plan after criticism from Hasidic leaders.
Earlier this year, the state released another proposal that would reduce school requirements and make the consequences of ignoring the law more opaque. Hasidic leaders are still campaigning against it on a large scale, resulting in the state receiving some 350,000 comments about the regulation, most of them negative.
The rule will have little impact on New York’s hundreds of independent non-Hassidic religious schools, including many Jewish schools that offer a strong secular curriculum, but the state’s most elite private schools. Some have joined efforts to thwart regulation.
Hasidic leaders have warned for years that government interference with yeshivas would be a threat to their communities, and many have called on their followers to block the restrictions.
“This is a true extermination order for our future generations and we are obliged to make every effort to rescind this order,” read the Yiddish letter. Signed petitions against the rules are entered into a lottery to “win beautiful prizes.”
Aaron Twerski, Brooklyn Law School professor and Yeshiva alumnus, said: When asked if he was concerned about the lack of secular education in many Hasidic schools, Twelski replied, “We are making the trade-offs, not the state.”
Despite opposition, the board made few changes to the proposal before formally approving it on Tuesday. officials praised the move.
“As legislators, taxpayers, and Jews, we fear that we continue to magnify this out-of-control system, and that we are doing so with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. A Manhattan Democrat who chairs the Finance Committee: “State Department of Education rules adopted today must be implemented promptly.”
Jay Root contributed to the report.