Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

In a first, New York state declares a Hasidic school’s education inadequate

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by a mother who sent three sons to the school.

In an unprecedented step, New York state has determined that a Brooklyn Hasidic boys’ school is failing to provide a basic education to its students.

The decision, made by Education Commissioner Betty Rosa last week, and first reported by The New York Times Wednesday morning, marks the first time the state has declared a Hasidic school out of compliance.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Beatrice Weber, who sent three sons to the school, Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem in Williamsburg, and attested that the school had failed to provide them with a basic secular education. Yeshivas often offer little instruction in reading, math and science, and standardized test scores show that the vast majority of their students fail to meet minimum competencies.

New York City education officials had recommended that the school be found in compliance. Mayor Eric Adams, who won election last year with the endorsements of several Orthodox voting blocs, said on the campaign trail in 2021 said he was “impressed” by the education offered at the yeshiva he had visited.

Weber, who heads Yaffed, a nonprofit that seeks to improve secular education in yeshivas, told the Forward she has mixed feelings about the ruling. “On the one hand I’m thrilled that the state stood up to the recommendations of the BOE,” she said, referring to the city’s board of education.

The education offered at the school is not substantially equivalent to what public schools require, she said, and “we all know that.”

But she said the ruling also left it to the city to work with the school to improve its secular studies, and the city has “been shown to be so untrustworthy,” she said.

Hasidic schools have historically been reluctant to allow public education officials through their doors, fearing they will insist on watering down religious coursework and introducing secular ideas many Hasidic parents want their children to avoid.

The ruling is the first since the New York State Board of Regents last month approved rules to compel private schools, including yeshivas, to show that they offer a basic secular education.

That unanimous vote came on the heels of a New York Times investigation that showed that more than 100 Hasidic boys’ schools in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley received at least $1 billion in public funding in the past four years while failing to provide adequate instruction in secular subjects.

The state’s decision may invite more lawsuits against yeshivas, and signals that private schools may face a harder time avoiding scrutiny of their curricula in the future.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.