Comments on: Op-Ed: A Vote for School Choice Party

By: zed

zed — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:36:06 +0000

I would be interested to know how students in yeshivas, BY’s and other frum private schools perform on standardized tests compared to Jewish students in public schools and non-frum private schools.

In my limited experience, students in frum schools are noticeably weaker in English. I assume this is in part because their teachers, parents, peers and communities tend to speak Yinglish, but it may also be the result of a weaker curriculum or an under-appreciation of the high level of precision that is achievable in standard English as compared with other languages. My concern, in part, is that frum schools underestimate the importance of secular subjects – math, English, US and world history, among others – or consider secular subjects a distraction from the important mission of frum schools from teaching Torah, Talmud and other Jewish portions of the curriculum.

I certainly appreciate the burden of frum-school tuition, but I fear that public subsidies – whether to the schools or to the students and their parents – will only act as a floor on tuition costs and further drive up the cost of private education. In the past 30 years, tax dollars have been used to enable students to pay private college tuition, and the ginormous rise in college tuition is a discouraging sign that public subsidies have adverse effects on tuition pricing.

For frum communities, protection against tuition increases can come from open, good-faith and honest efforts between tuition payers, i.e., parents, and tuition receivers, i.e., the rabbis and other educators who run frum schools. I do not think that more taxpayer subsidies alone will provide relief for parents burdened by frum-school tuition.

By: Milhouse

Milhouse — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:06:04 +0000

#4, your claim that tuition would rise by the amount of the voucher is obvious nonsense. A Jewish school is not a profit-making venture; they set the price as low as they can without having to close, so why would they raise it just because parents have vouchers? Your cynical view is without foundation.

By: akuperma

akuperma — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:12:26 +0000

#3- and have you noticed how the government welfare food programs (WIC and food stamps) tell you what you can spend it on and what you can’t.

So apply that to education – here is a free science teacher to teach your kids all about science (evolution, sex, etc.)– genuine public school quality. Imagine what they do to history?

In fact in many countries the government does pay for the secular education, and the frum Jews there manage to survive it. Those families who send their children to school that focus on college prep probably won’t notice a difference, but the more yeshivish families would. And of course, we should look at the situation in Eretz Yisrael where government funding of Torah education comes with a price (and one which may be getting much higher in the near future).

Sometimes, freedom means being able to say “no” to becoming a client of the state.

By: Ctrl Alt Del

Ctrl Alt Del — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:02:21 +0000

Nice idea, but it will never work. At least not for religious Jews. When the subject of vouchers came up in NJ a local school administrator was asked his opinion on them. He plainly stated that the price that tuition prices would rise by the exact amount of the vouchers. Are you hearing this? We would all be paying the SAME tuition. Even though there was a voucher in place. For all the complaining out there, this is totally our fault. In yesteryear Jewish kids went to public school and had religious studies afterward or whenever, on their own time. Now I of course recognize that public schools today are not what they were 30 years ago. But I think that we have contributed to that. Moving on, there is also the feeling that we want to be a separate from non-Jews as possible. That we want to limit our interaction with those that do not share our values. I can appreciate that. But this leaves us founding our own schools and having to pay for not only torah studies but secular as well. And we have already paid for those studies in property and other taxes. What are we to do? We are hammered from both ends. We want to uphold our torah values but we dont have the money to pay exorbitant tuitions. But as I said, we have done it to ourselves.

By: MDshweks

MDshweks — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:44:46 +0000

akuperma #1,
the same way a private store can say who comes in and who doesn’t, and you still can buy food with food stamps in such a store, so too the government can give you a voucher for education to be educated in A PRIVATE setting.

And the same way in some states you can get a voucher for home schooling, a private school is no worse…

By: Yira

Yira — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:54:59 +0000

Children going to schools run by various religions, will turn out to be very extreme and fanatical in their religion, and it will be Goirem to alot of Retzicha and Shfichas Domim.
The more fanatic a school is, the more money it will get from Saudi Arabia’s Shieks.

By: akuperma

akuperma — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:40:54 +0000

Sounds like someone flunked civics (or perhaps is a new immigrant from Eretz Yisrael where you have a system designed to allow “new” parties).

To get “school choice” in a way that benefits us, focus on how to make “school choice” benefit the rest of the community (the African Americans, Hispanics, professional teachers many of whom are frei Jews, etc.).

Then ask whether you would want to send your child to a school that in return for being eligible for government funding, turned over much of the curriculum to the government. Also ask if you are willing to send your child to a school with non-Jews. The last is important, since a single gender school with privately financed religious or ethnic tracts would be a lot more likely to be funded if it included multiple ethnic and religious groups.