It took a product of the ultra-Orthodox school system to get New York City to investigate the quality of secular education at the city’s ultra-Orthodox schools. Following a campaign by Naftuli Moster, 29, founder and executive director of an activist group called YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education), New York City’s Department of Education announced…
“So, wait, Miss — there is a difference between Jews and Israelis?” Coming from a seventh-grade Jordanian of Palestinian origin, this question was a breakthrough in my classroom. As a foreign teacher in a private Jordanian school, I need to be careful what I say in front of my students. I am not allowed to…
(JTA) — When Ali Martell’s eldest daughter reached school age, Martell and her husband both assumed she’d go to a Jewish day school, as they had. And for a while, she did. But after the couple’s two younger children started school, too, the Martells began to feel overburdened by tuition. They couldn’t afford to send…
About 2 miles west of the Delaware River, eight deaf Jewish girls sit circled on a gym floor, tossing plastic fruits and vegetables at each other. Zissy Moskowitz, one of two interpreters for the group, walks around the circle, taking pictures for a blog the girls’ parents have been following for two weeks now. Moskowitz,…
It’s common for young Jews to study Hebrew until the age of 13 — and then never interact with the language again. Hebrew school students learn the alphabet, but often have little understanding of what the prayers mean. Having a conversation in modern Hebrew is a long shot. This phenomenon raises questions about the priorities…
“Listen closely. Can you hear the heels of the ruby red shoes clicking?” Dennis Francis, a formerly incarcerated inmate turned poet, asked a packed, silent classroom in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. “There’s no place like homeless shelters, there’s no place like homeless shelters.” It was a Wednesday afternoon at the The Fortune…
In a country where residential ZIP codes have long dictated public school zoning, the education reform movement in recent years has also brought to the forefront a notion of school choice in which families can decide where to send their children to school on public dollars, regardless of where they live. Charter schools, which are…
Just in time for back-to-school this fall, a New York politician is trying to pass a bill that would require Mayor Bill de Blasio to fund the same security in private schools that public schools have access to already. City Councilman David Greenfield sponsored the bill, known as Intro 65, to address what he saw…
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