Monday, September 12, 2022
New York finalizes rules requiring private schools, including yeshivas, to prove they meet standards
New York's proposed new regulations for private schools elicited hundreds of thousands of public comments, years of debate and intense activism on every side. But on Monday morning, a key education policy committee signed off on the regulations quickly and unanimously.
The regulations are proposed amendments to New York State's "substantial equivalency" regulations meant to clarify how the state determines that private schools offer instruction that is similar to that offered in public schools. New York's Board of Regents, which sets education policy for the state, has been weighing them since 2018, spurred largely by criticism of the state's Hasidic Jewish yeshivas.
The 2018 regulations were thrown out by a state judge in 2019 on procedural grounds, after religious groups, including several representing the yeshivas, challenged them in court. The newest version, introduced this past spring, allows private schools to pick from among multiple options — including being reviewed by local public school authorities, taking state-approved assessments or being approved by an accreditation organization — and also clarifies that schools that offer state exams will not have to allow education officials to inspect them.
Monday's vote only solidified rules on the methods the state will use to determine equivalency, not the actual curriculum schools need to follow. Still, for major stakeholders, including leaders in Hasidic yeshivas, the vote signifies that the state will start paying more attention to an area that they have been lax on enforcing in recent years.
The Regents' signoff, which is expected to be complete Tuesday after a vote by the full board, comes one day after the New York Times published a major investigation concluding that in the Hasidic yeshivas, "generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency."
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