NEW YORK — When Bill de Blasio ran for mayor of New York City in 2013 and for reelection in 2017, oversight of secular education in haredi Orthodox yeshivas wasn’t a major part of the race.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a news conference, Feb. 10, 2021. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
This year, however, some candidates hoping to succeed de Blasio are wading right in. A small but vocal circle of critics of the yeshivas say the schools are failing to provide their students with an adequate education in English, math and other secular subjects.
Some top candidates promise to keep the city’s education officials from interfering in yeshiva curricula.
No candidate has gone as far as Andrew Yang, the former Democratic presidential candidate and tech entrepreneur.
At least twice on the campaign trail Yang said he would “respect religious freedom”. . . and essentially allow parents and administrators of the parochial schools to decide what’s best for their children.
The biggest difference between the past and the current mayoral campaign is an investigation by the city’s Dept. of Education. The probe received thousands of public comments objecting to government interference and left the current hands off policy in place.
The probe, launched in 2015, found that 26 of the 28 yeshivas examined were not meeting state secular education standards. A delay in releasing its results led to charges that de Blasio had slow-walked the report in deference to Orthodox leaders.
The investigation was advocated by Young Advocates for Fair Education, or YAFFED, a group founded in 2012 by yeshiva graduates who believe that some yeshivas leave students ill-prepared for the world beyond their Yiddish-speaking communities.
The group organized a 2015 letter from yeshiva graduates and parents of yeshiva students that accused 39 local yeshivas of failing to meet state secular studies requirements and prompted the investigation of the more than two dozen schools.
The schools did not hide their curriculum from parents who enrolled their children.
The irony of the investigation was in the literate quality of the objections articulated in the unprecedented number of public comments by graduates of the schools alleged to have left their students ill prepared.
In a city where the Orthodox vote can be crucial, and a crowded field of candidates are jockeying for attention ahead of an all-important June 22 Democratic primary, the issue has become a hot button.
In New York, mayors assert substantial control over the local schools.
Since 1894, New York has required private schools to provide a secular education of “substantial equivalency” to that provided by public schools.
The city’s investigation into 28 schools, completed in 2018, found that two were actually meeting state standards.
David Bloomfield, a professor of education at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, as well as an advocate for greater oversight of secular education in yeshivas, says:
“No mayor has fulfilled their obligation in that area, and the main reason is because of the voting strength of the ultra-Orthodox leadership.”
YAFFED has received intense pushback from leaders of the haredi Orthodox community. A rival group, Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools, or PEARLS, was founded in 2015 and is “committed to protecting the fundamental right of parents to choose that their children receive the intensive religious instruction and academic programs offered at yeshivas,” according to the group’s mission statement.
PEARLS appreciates the hands-off approach proposed by Yang and others.
“We are gratified that the leading mayoral candidates have repeatedly acknowledged what we have always known: Parents choose yeshiva education for their children because they will graduate with the skills and the knowledge necessary to lead successful careers and lives,” Rich Bamberger, a spokesperson for PEARLS, said.
Yeruchim Silber, director of New York government relations for Agudath Israel, a haredi advocacy organization, said candidates should “understand that parents of yeshiva students have made a choice and to respect that choice.
“The state should not impose a one-size-fits-all solution on all yeshivas including what courses to teach and how many hours to teach each one,” Silber said in an email.
Agudath Israel has held town hall meetings with a number of the city’s mayoral candidates, discussing a number of issues with the candidates, yeshivas among them.
Several candidates have promised to keep the city from interfering in yeshivas, a stance appealing to Orthodox voters.
Yang has tacked in different directions on the issue. In January he told Politico that “Schools failing to meet baseline standards should be investigated.”
The next month, at a forum sponsored by the politically liberal New York Jewish Agenda, he appeared to side with the yeshivas, saying, “If a school is delivering the same outcomes, I do not think we should be prescribing rigid curricula.”
A supporter of YAFFED, responding to Yang’s comments in the New York Daily News, said Yang’s focus on “outcomes” — as opposed to enforcing required curriculum standards — would give yeshivas “free rein to continue failing their students.”
In an interview published March 22 by the newspaper Hamodia, Yang again suggested that schools be given wide leeway in the name of “religious liberty” and to keep the focus on outcomes.
“We should not be interfering as long as the educational outcomes are good. But we need to be driven by the data,” he said.
Other Candidates
Also vying for mayor is Eric Adams, who has fostered close ties with Orthodox communities in Brooklyn during his tenure as Brooklyn borough president. At a visit to a Brooklyn yeshiva earlier this month, Adams praised the school.
“I was really impressed by what I saw,” he told the Forward. “Watching those children understand grammar, understand English, saying they like writing and reading, it was amazing.”
Adams declined to name the yeshiva, though Simcha Eichenstein, an Orthodox city councilman representing Borough Park, told the Forward it was one of the “29 yeshivas most heavily scrutinized by the city.”
Menashe Shapiro, a campaign spokesperson, said Adams believes that “cultural sensitivity is how you meet educational standards.”
“A cornerstone of his philosophy is cultural familiarity in education, and how important it is for a child to see him or herself in their education,” Shapiro said.
“This principal guides his approach to yeshiva education as well, and what he saw was children experiencing subject matter in a culturally sensitive way, where each student felt a part of what they were learning.”
Scott Stringer, the city comptroller and a mayoral candidate, told Hamodia in an interview last week that he would “work with the yeshiva community that I have strong relations with to make sure that we meet the standards that are applied.”
Asked about enforcement specifically, Stringer seemed to signal a soft approach.
“No, we’re not barnstorming into yeshivas. We’re going to work with the education leader of the yeshiva,” he said.
Kathryn Garcia, a former Sanitation Dept. commissioner, also appears to be stepping lightly about enforcement of state standards for secular education.
“In ensuring all our schools are preparing our youth for bright futures, I will focus on improving our public school system, and will be vigilant about counteracting assumptions about religious education,” she wrote.
“The majority of our city’s parochial schools, including yeshivas, provide a strong educational foundation for children whose parents have chosen a non-traditional public school environment.”
Recent polls have shown Yang with a substantial lead.
Even for candidates who are not actively courting the Orthodox community, no candidate wants to appear to be insensitive to a religious group, especially one that comprises a substantial voting bloc. At the same time, they don’t want to appear to be lowering educational standards.
The issue is unlikely to disappear when the race is over.
