Is the MO community concerned with SED? Why the silence?

They probably spoke with their lawyers and realized they have little to be scared about.

1. They may be offering already additional time then the right-wing Yeshiva’s do for secular education. So they might be meeting the requirements as is, and even if not, the amount off would likely not be much.
2. Their academic performance levels by all measures (regents, SAT scores, acceptance to college, etc) often place them in the top schools in the State
3. Very few students after graduating ever have to apply for welfare and they are overall self-sufficient.

Taken together, the State would have a very difficult time arguing with them how to educate. Freedom of religion does apply and if the State can’t point to any reason, other then an arbitrary set of guidelines, then the State will likely lose in court if they tried forcing them to do much.

Contrast this to the right-wing Yeshiva’s (especially the few that don’t teach any secular education… the Satmar Rebbe in a recent address, openly said this about his schools).

1. Secular studies is limited to 4 days a week, for 90 minutes to a few hours (depending on the specific school and assuming they actually teach secular studies).
2. Due to lack of secular education, some of the more extreme schools have no academic performance levels to assess them by or they are minimally relevant (e.g. is everyone taking regents, what about the kids who don’t show up to secular studies?)
3. With numerous students in Kollel, even from schools that academics are decent, they still rely heavily on social welfare and many are not self-sufficient. From schools with no secular studies, the amount of people on social welfare are seemingly from the highest levels out there (look at data for New Square, Kiryas Joel, and Yiddish Williamsburg).

On point 3 alone, which is kind of a big deal, the State can justify that since outcomes are not good they have a right to regulate. So Yeshiva’s have much greater reason to be concerned.

Some might argue that the reasons for social welfare are larger families, etc. It really does not matter the reason. Consider a thought exercise. If everyone in the country did exactly what these Yeshiva’s do, then the rate of people on welfare in this country would shoot up and very likely create an unsustainable situation. Hence, even if this is relatively a small part of the overall population it is not a good outcome. I am sure a smart person here could argue my analysis is wrong. It really does not matter. The burden of showing that Yeshiva’s produce good outcomes, is going to rest much heavier on the Yeshivas then on the State. So unless you have very clear and powerful arguments to bring to a judge, the State will very likely be found to have a clear right to regulate. As to the specifics of how to regulate, that might be up for debate.

Its that the MO will be able to make a strong argument that they’re not neccesary. They’ll have the data to back up high levels of proficiency, high college graduatuon rates, and low welfare usage.

If the frummer yeshivos win, the more modern ones are covered. If the frummer ones lose, then the more modern ones can challenge law on different grounds (e.g. that they get better results than the public schools in secular subjects and that therefore the hours requriements are arbitrary and capricious). The frummer yeshivos will have to argue hat, either, 1) their achievement is equal or better than the minimum achievement required in the lowest-performing public schools, 2) that the academic requirements are arbitrary and capricious, 3) the whole concept of government regulation of parochial schools is unconstitutional.

If private schools don’t offer enough time studying secular subjects

Who defines “enough”?

Why is more success than public schools not good enough to get less than 10% of the funding per student than the public schools get?

This is a gezeira against all frum schools (particularly boys’ yeshivas). It’s very inappropriate for you to be inserting partisan anti-chassidic politics into this.

Academic levels aside, would you want your competitor evaluating whether you should remain in business, or not? The fact that it is the local school board that is tasked with evaluations, no matter what standards the state wants, creates an inherent conflict if interest. In many districts across the state the local public school is often competing for the same student (and by default the dollars they must alloxate) as private (often catholic) schools. Think local school board in ramapo, lawrence and ither district’s where There us friction. Imagine the conflict of interest, now that the local board can do away with the competition by simply declaring it not up to standard, and shutting it down.

DY, except it was the poor performing chassidish yeshivas that caused this mess

The MO mosdos generally prefer that the State education bureaucrats stay out of decisions on curriculum and time devoted to instruction. However, they also understand the State’s legitimate interest in enforcing minimal standards for schools accepting any form of state financial assistance. If you line up the MO Schools with the Chareidi schools, I suspect the latter will not show up well on average test scores etc. The MO are walking a fine line but at the end, they should stand together with the more frum schools in insisting that the state should NOT impose its views on the frum schools..

This was repeated many times already. Maybe capitalizing the message will help it sink in. THE STATE IS SAYING WE NEED TO FOLLOW THEIR GUIDELINES OR THE KIDS ATTENDING THESE SCHOOLS ARE TRUANT. WHETHER THE SCHOOL IS PARTIALLY GOVERNMENT FUNDED OR NOT DOESN’T CHANGE THIS.

Withholding funding is an additional threat for those that don’t comply. And the Yeshivas are rightfully upset that they are not getting funds towards secular education, yet the state is interfering.

Anecdotally, the so called private schools in Israel probably receive funding for more categories. In NYS it’s basically money for school lunches for those eligible, textbooks, bussing and special ed.

I went to a pretty yeshivish school elementary school, in 7-8th grade we had 4-5 hours of secular studies every day, and the MO school in the same area had more. when I went to yeshiva it went down to 2 hours a day then none. the more yeshivish schools definitely need more secular studies if kids can’t pass regents, if they can, the gov is getting their money’s worth.

Abba S: The state doesn’t pay a local school $25k per child to educate them. The school pays $12-15k, and the state reimburses an amount of that (majority from local taxes).

In cases like Lakewood, forcing children to go public would mean that the town would get more funding from the state, and that a $29 million transportation budget to get kids to 140 schools (20,000 routes) would shrink to getting children to maybe 50 schools, each close to a child’s home, at about 3000 routes (assuming 10-15 kids picked up per stop). The budget would be a small fraction of the current total.

Back to the topic. They will not push the MO schools where children do well on the regents. The target will be places like KJ, where there is almost no secular education and the link to poverty/ welfare is high. And honestly, if they are so adamant about not teaching government lessons, they shouldn’t be so quick to take govt funds. I disagree with truancy because they’re getting an education. But I believe the govt wants their education to help them become contributing members of society, so they will force the issue on these Yeshivos.

Joseph: you say the state wont care if they fail. How do you know that?

This is not something that the liberals would want to do, but if someone were to group by ethnicity, would Yeshiva’s test scores still fair better?

Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ’s of any ethnicity; that’s definitely a confounding variable in saying that Orthodox schools have better scores than public schools. Do Jews going to Yeshivas actually perform better than Jews going to public schools? Or, are we just not comparing apples to apples?

Also, for those taking the anti-legislation rhetoric out to its logical extreme, if a governing body is going to have a law forbidding thingermuwhut, it has to define what thingermuwhut is. Same goes here for truancy. There’s no point in an arbitrary law that anyone can get out of because it relies on the honor system. Either be intellectually honest and say you think there should be no truancy laws at all, or admit that they have a common sense responsibility to define what it means to be in school.

Genya: They can earn but not quite learn. At least not if you’re speaking of learn in the Jewish sense.

funnybone: It is standard knowledge, and nothing controversial, that the government does not financially or otherwise penalize schools whose students are largely failing. This isn’t even under dispute. If the government did penalize for that, most NYC public schools would be penalized.

The law simply requires a certain curriculum. The law doesn’t require that any percentage of students actually pass the courses in that curriculum. As such, the government cannot go above the law and require what the law doesn’t require.