As New York City yeshivas return to court amid claims of discrimination by the State Department of Education, we declare our complete lack of faith in the agency’s ability to oversee those schools.
SED is now a joke when it comes to policing the handful of institutions that have yet to prove they’re preparing their students to meet state standards — standards that SED and its masters on the state Board of Regents are actively destroying.
That an earlier SED effort in the name of policing the suspect yeshivas amounted to a (failed) power grab over the curricula of all New York private schools is a damning sign of the agency’s true priorities.
And SED is now moving to let all state public high-schoolers graduate even if unprepared for the real world — which is pretty much the knock against that handful of yeshivas.
We’re not happy that some few schools may still focus on Jewish law, prayer and tradition to the exclusion of higher-level math and other subjects vital to success in the secular world.
But the Regents and SED are now bent on handing diplomas to far more young people who haven’t learned enough to function in college or the workplace beyond high school.
With their political masters in the Legislature (above all, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie) in thrall to the state’s powerful teachers unions, the Regents, state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and SED below them, have completely abandoned any effort to ensure public schools teach what they should.
That, sickly enough, does seem to make it religious discrimination if they hold the yeshivas to a higher standard.
Bottom line: Of whatever race, creed or income, all New York parents are on their own when it comes to ensuring their kids get a decent education; the government officials sworn to do that are instead covering up for failure.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
