Note: Much of this post is based on research collected by Steven White of the East Ramapo, New York educational advocacy group The Power of Ten. White and The Power of Ten support a proposed New York State regulation to closely monitor religious schools to ensure that they provide students with state mandated education requirements.
Article XI of the New York State Constitution mandates that the state legislature “provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated.” In 1995, the State Court of Appeals ruled that the education article of the Constitution “requires the State to offer all children the ‘opportunity’ for a “sound basic education.” The state’s Board of Regents and Education Department are supposed to ensure that these mandates are met.
On the face of it, proposed state education rule EDU-27-19-00010-P on Substantially Equivalent Instruction for Nonpublic School Students seems pretty innocuous. It lists its purpose as providing “guidance to local school authorities (LSAs) to assist them in fulfilling their responsibilities under Education Law §§ 3204, 3205, and 3210 in determining whether students in nonpublic schools are receiving instruction that is at least substantially equivalent to the instruction being provided to students of like age and attainments at the public schools. The intent of the substantial equivalency process is to ensure that all students receive the education to which they are entitled under the law.” The measure contains a series of provisions to ensure that private and religious schools would not find compliance with oversight burdensome.
It is puzzling that a measure supposed to guarantee that student receive an education “at least substantially equivalent to the instruction being provided to students of like age and attainments at the public schools” is framed in such careful and narrow terms. The limited scope of the proposal reflects the electoral influence of powerful religious groups in the state, how wary elected officials and state appointees are of crossing them, and how important it is to have regulations with teeth, not just suggestions for local authorities, that are enforced by state law.
Comments by the general public on the proposed ruling must be submitted by September 2, 2019. You can post your views on the website for Young Advocates for Fair Education. The executive director of YAFFED, Naftuli Moster, attended Hasidic Yeshivas (elementary and high schools) in Brooklyn, New York. Moster founded YAFFED after he discovered that he and his friends had received a fundamentally inadequate education in their religious school.
A 90-page YAFFED report documents that mandated education is not provided in many non-public schools. According to the report, “When yeshivas do provide education in secular subjects, it is in just a few grades, for one hour to ninety minutes at the end of the long school day. Typically, instruction is provided in very basic English reading and arithmetic, along with minimal levels of English writing. Teachers are often unqualified -- some barely know English themselves -- and the “English” class period (as the time devoted to secular studies is called) is often treated as free time for restless students. Textbooks are heavily censored, when they are used at all. High schools for boys typically provide absolutely no secular education.”
As the chairman of the organization “East Ramapo Stakeholders for Public Education,” Steven White became aware that instruction in some religious schools, especially local Hasidic boys’ schools, did not satisfy state mandates. According to Steven White, prior to 2005, there was an informal agreement between the Hasidic schools and administrators of the East Ramapo public school system that Hasidic school administrators would use their influence to ensure that the public school budget proposal was not voted down by the Hasidic community. In exchange, public school district officials ignored the failure of the Hasidic schools to comply with state-mandated education guidelines. However, since 2005 the East Ramapo School Board has been controlled by a majority aligned with the religious schools and any pretense of oversight was been dropped.
In New York State, non-public high schools registered with the State Education Department (NYSED) are authorized to issue high school diplomas if students meet the same standards required of public school students. According to White, “only 46% of the 35,982 students in Jewish schools in grades 9-12 in New York State are in programs registered with NYSED. Almost 20,000 students are enrolled in high schools that cannot issue state recognized diplomas; the graduation rate for these schools is essentially zero.”
In Rockland County, where East Ramapo is located, there are over 1,800 students enrolled in the eighth grade in ultra-Orthodox Jewish non-public schools. White discovered that during the most recent testing period, only 387, about 22% of eligible students, took the state math tests and only 134, less than 1%, took the English/Language Arts exam.
Because the East Ramapo school board is controlled by an ultra-Orthodox religious faction, it is unlikely to enforce state educational mandates. School board leaders and prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis are already promising to resist what they call a war on their religious rights, although they acknowledge that in their religious high schools they currently offer “zero or at most 1.5 hours of secular studies a day.” Former East Ramapo school board president, currently a member of the Rockland County legislature, Aron Wieder, declared the proposed state review guidelines an “attack on our religious freedom” and a “declaration of war against the Orthodox Jewish community.” He promised that religious schools would defend their right not to adequately children “by all means possible.”
Follow Alan Singer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReecesPieces8