New York lawmakers have agreed to delay regulations on nonpublic religious schools, bowing to pressure from Orthodox Jewish leaders and ignoring concerns from the state’s top education officials.
Draft bill language reviewed by Gothamist would create another pathway for nonpublic schools to meet a standard known as “substantial equivalency,” which requires them to be more or less on par with public schools on subjects like reading and math. The Democratic leaders of both branches of the state Legislature confirmed that changes to the standard would appear in the still-pending state budget.
The state education department approved substantial equivalency regulations in 2022 and has spent the intervening years implementing a process for private schools to demonstrate compliance. That work has been particularly controversial for some yeshivas – schools run for and by the Orthodox Jewish community – where a state investigation found in 2023 that some offer little to no instruction in English, math and other non-religious topics…