Thanks to the advocacy of several Jewish organizations including the Sephardic Community Federation, UJO of Williamsburg, Agudath Israel & the BJE, beginning this week thousands of yeshiva children are now eligible to receive free tutoring services. At the request of the Jewish groups, the Department of Education (DOE) has contracted with Catapult Learning, a leading education support service company, to provide free remedial services to thousands of yeshiva students. This pilot project will allow students at Bais Yaakov of Boro Park, Yeshiva Toras Emes Kaminetz and Yeshivat Ohr Haiim to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tutoring services absolutely free.
“In our research, we came across a federal program that should be providing New York’s yeshiva students with over fifty million dollars a year worth of free tutoring services but was not.” explained David Greenfield, Executive Vice President of SCF “Armed with that data, we spent over a year working with the Department of Education to change the rules so that our yeshiva students would benefit from this federal program. Boruch Hashem, our hard work has been rewarded with Department of Education now agreeing to allow a pilot program of three yeshivas to receive these free services.” Greenfield went on to explain that if all goes well, next year this program will be expanded to most yeshivas in New York City. This historic breakthrough would eventually allow tens of thousands of yeshiva students to receive top-notch remedial services at absolutely no cost to parents or yeshivas.
SCF Executive Vice President David G. Greenfield and UJO President Rabbi David Niederman, both of whom were appointed by the Mayor’s office to the NYC-DOE’s Non-Public School Standing Committee, led the historic effort to obtain millions of dollars worth of education services for New York’s yeshiva students. As part of its effort to give yeshivas the opportunity to avail themselves of federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) services, SCF prepared for the NYC-DOE a comprehensive 28-page report in February 2007 entitled “Why Aren’t New York City Yeshivas Receiving Their Fair Share Of NCLB Funds & Services And What Can Be Done To Remedy This Inequity?”
The study found that although the federal NCLB Act requires that all funds get distributed in an equitable dollar-per-pupil eligibility formula for public and private schools, there was substantial evidence that students in New York City’s yeshivas have not benefited from this legislation. The report concluded that 30,000 students in Brooklyn yeshivas are missing out on approximately $40 million each year in Title I services which they are entitled to, but not receiving.
“The federal government established a program intended to benefit all struggling students, in both public and private school alike, yet not everyone has been able to take advantage of this program,” said SCF Executive Vice President David Greenfield, “Now that the DOE has agreed to our request to change the rules to benefit yeshiva students, I am optimistic that no student in New York City will be left behind any longer.”
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11 Responses
If this is a Federal grant, does that mean that every state should be entitled to this benefit? If so, does anyone know if actions outside of NY have taken place to get the “ball rolling”?
NY is always ahead of NJ on the yeshiva education front. NJ yeshivas, on the whole, still have to advocate the value of getting a good education during the regular, classroom time. Standardized education would greatly benefit the boys and not leave them challenged, in many case, for life.
While this site may not endorse “dummying down” in education, articles have been printed here that play the role of education down. There was an article of a young man who scored exceedingly well on a certain standard exam who stated that learning such things, when younger, would have been a waste of time. But, while that man was successful in spite not wanting a good, early education, I am not sure he would not make a good blue print for a plan to ensure success in having a good deal of our young people properly educated, resulting in our youth growing up to be educated adults.
Does this mean that thousands of yugerleit who do not have money to pay rent and tuition will get parnoso ? please inform us how to sign up thank you
My wife is a P3 provider for the NYC B.of Ed.and
did research on this program. Catapault only pays each yeshiva $1250 per student per year.Do the math & you’ll find that the certified teacher (a must)@ $40.00/hr, must teach 40 students to earn $50,000, and each student gets only 31.25 hrs of instruction when his/her funding runs out! THat is how misleading this thousands eligible is!
If Yeshivot had quality math and science educational programs, the students wouldn’t need remedial tutoring.
All,
does anybofy know if this is coming soon to monsey?
NTC,
I don’t understand what’s misleading here. If each kid can get 30 hours of free tutoring per year (approx 1 hour per week, not including yom tov, summer vacation etc) that sounds like a wonderful thing to me. And the fact that the provider must have 40 students to make 50K is a problem? I’m missing something here.
frummerthanthou,
huh???? If some kids need extra help its the schools fault??? Ever hear of learning disabilities?
The statement from David Greenfield about free tutoring services for Yeshiva students in NYC is fraught with a lot of misinformation. It is NOT a tutoring program. ESEA Title I is a remedial, supplemental program. Its goal is to provide the eligible students with literacy skills so they can function better in their regular classroom setting. It has nothing to do with tutoring. Many Yeshiva students have been benefiting from this program for close to forty years.The NYC DOE has been providing all students with trained, licensed reading specialists during school time. In addition, many of the teachers in the Title I program have been very appropriate for Yeshiva students. I hope we haven’t shortchanged our needy Yeshiva students because of an unwillingness to tweak the schedules slightly. It is a little premature to claim so much credit in the public arena.
KGH missed the whole boat. Up until now it WASN’T a tutoring program. NOW, thanks to Greenfield and Co., it is. Check out Catapult Learning’s website. What they do is tutor in math, reading, writing, etc. So FOR THE FIRST time yeshiva kids will get free tutoring. It’s always incredible to me that anonymous people feel the need to attack our askanim for their great work. Keep up the good work Greenfield. You’re a hero to the frum community!
Sorry, but 30 hours per year of tutoring or remediation is a drop in the bucket.What if some kids need more help than that? And who do the tutors report to? Who follows up, and keeps track of progress or regression? Will a tutor in this type of program be in touch with 40 teachers and parents?! I’m not generally so skeptical, but this sounds like glorified babysitting to me. Certified teachers should be working in jobs that impact positively on children’s lives. The ones who’ll benefit most? Catapult administrators.
It is imperative that Catapult and any other provider, including the NYC DOE,follow the guidelines set out by ESEA TITLE I which is a federally funded program, also referred to now as NCLB. If you check the guidelines of the program, it is still not a tutoring program. All schools and providers must follow the rules, so that there will not be any unfortunate consequences.
i dont kno wwhether to laugh or cry at the stupidity or th econning of the ny bd of ed of the yeshiva world; title I has been around for at least 20 years; it is a federal program that all states are entitled to; nys has had an easier time of bringing fed. funding and state funneling of these funds into the yeshivos bec. of the irish catholics who historically fought for religious schools to recieve funding; study history of education in the us.
what we have here is capatalism as well as democracy at work; the bd of ed is tired of handling the running of title i and remedial services such as IEP mandatres. what they want to do and what has been successful in the OT. PT Speech and social therapies is to hav agencies handle the hiring and paying of these workers; so… bec. those agencies and therapists have shown that “farming out the work” to agencies has been helpful. the nd of ed. now wants private agencies to manage for them the academic side re the p3 providers and all tof title I ie reading, math, ESL and Social worker/guidance councelors; its very scary if we are part of a pilot program run by an agency that is only providing services to 3 yeshivos; what about the rest of the schools who have title i already are we going to be stranded? what is really happening her is the viewpoint of th ebd of ed. they wan to t see if an agnecy can handle the fed money better than they can; is this a win for greenfield et al or are all yeshivos who hav etitle i already going to loose while this pilot is in place? I am a school adinistrator an dam not very happy with this news if my children are left out. so please research for the rest of us and stop tooting a horn for a program that has been in place already. also, there are many yeshivos in brooklyn who refuse to have title i bec. it lowers their standards; childern who have to go to a school tha tprovides title i but are zone inelligable cannot get services in their neighborhood yeshiva bec they are considerred substandard children and then they are not elligable in a school that has the services bec. of wherre they live. this is what greenfield and company should have worked on; we th eyeshiva world need to care for all our children and every yeshiva should be required to take children who need extra help; i am not talking about severly challenged students i am talking aobut poor and imiigrant children.