>Yeshivas send thousands of letters pushing back against draft state oversight rules
Previous attempts at more oversight were met with resistance from a wide array of independent school groups, from elite Manhattan private schools to Catholic schools.
“Catholic schools are the very model for education in America, and we have the test scores and graduation rates to prove it,” said Superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York Michael Deegan. “While we welcome most any measurement of our rigorous academics, we remain concerned with the notion of local school districts being empowered in any way to be the arbiters of such scrutiny.”
The Archdiocese added they are confident in the state education department to “strike a balance” between the schools and state standards.
“As the Board of Regents surely understands, parents dig deep into their pockets to educate their children in private schools precisely because they want their children to have an educational experience that is substantially different from — not substantially equivalent to — the experience they would have in public school,” wrote Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of Council for American Private Education.
“It is important to recall that even without overly prescriptive governmental regulation, private schools are already accountable to those who hold ultimate authority over them: their parent bodies,” the letter continues. “If parents are dissatisfied with the education their child is receiving in a private school, they are perfectly free to vote with their feet and enroll their child in another school.”
The revisions create flexibility for some private schools that protested earlier drafts by exempting accredited schools, like those through the New York State Association of Independent Schools, from stricter oversight. One letter said that reflected a “misplaced concern for private schools’ preferences rather than students’ rights.”
“A regulation has to stay within the contours or the boundaries of the law, and these are unauthorized exceptions,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
Education officials will review hundreds of thousands of letters over the next few months, then bring the regulations back to a vote in the fall.
A spokesperson for the New York State Education Department said the agency has yet to count the letters, and did not know if it was the largest volume it had received on a proposed regulation.
“New York State law requires education substantially equivalent to that provided in public schools be provided to all students in non-public schools,” said JP O’Hare, an agency spokesperson. “Therefore the Department has an obligation under the law to ensure all students receive an education that enables them to fulfill their potential and helps them develop the skills and knowledge needed to support themselves and their families, contribute to society and participate in civic life.”