Protecting Educational Standards in New York Amid Budget Negotiations
As New York’s budget negotiations drag on, a dangerous backroom effort is underway. Being targeted are New York’s “substantial equivalency” regulations — rules that ensure private schools, including religious ones, teach secular subjects like math, science, English, and history.
These efforts are happening quietly, far from public scrutiny — because their backers know most New Yorkers would be outraged if they understood what’s at stake.
Substantial equivalency is a simple, common-sense standard. State education law has long required that nonpublic schools provide instruction that is “substantially equivalent” to that of public schools. In 2022, after years of delay, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) finally issued regulations to enforce this law. Under those rules, local school authorities must determine by June whether nonpublic schools are meeting the standard.
These rules are not about punishing religious schools — they’re about protecting children’s right to an education. Every child in New York deserves the chance to learn basic literacy, numeracy, science, and civics — skills essential for participating in society, holding a job, and fulfilling civic duties like voting or serving on a jury.
Yet Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt calls these essential subjects part of a “woke, big-government education agenda.” In a recent press release, Ortt railed against NYSED, claiming it is “waging war on parental rights” and “trampling on religious schools’ autonomy.” He’s wrong. What’s truly radical is the effort to eliminate minimal educational protections under the banner of “parental choice.”
There is nothing “woke” about teaching children how to read and write. There is nothing radical about helping students understand math or U.S. history. What is radical is the status quo in too many Hasidic and Haredi yeshivas, where tens of thousands of students — mostly boys — are denied even the most basic instruction in these subjects.
Investigative reporting and former yeshiva students have made clear: many graduates cannot speak English fluently, fill out a job application, or understand the world beyond their religious communities. These children are being denied the opportunity to build a future for themselves and their families.
Ortt and his colleagues are trying to reframe this crisis of educational neglect as a fight over “freedom.” But the idea that students must choose between their faith and their future is a false one. Many yeshivas across the state strike an admirable balance between rigorous religious and secular instruction. In fact, yeshiva school days are often longer than those in public schools, providing ample time for both. What these regulations require is not uniformity, but adequacy — a basic floor, not a ceiling.
These standards have been developed thoughtfully, over years of legal battles, public comment, and engagement with stakeholders across communities. They reflect a careful effort to balance respect for religious traditions with the state’s constitutional responsibility to provide every child with a sound basic education.
Now, Ortt and his allies want to undo that work in a backroom budget deal. This is not policymaking — it’s sabotage. And it’s being done at the expense of children who lack the political power to defend themselves.
The lawmakers trying to gut educational oversight are using the same rhetoric seen in national attacks on public education: “parental rights,” “radical progressives,” and “big government.” This is the same playbook that has led to book bans, anti-LGBTQ policies, and the whitewashing of American history. Now, it’s being used to keep children from learning the times tables.
Ortt claims to be standing up for parents, but he ignores the many yeshiva graduates who have spoken out — bravely and painfully — about the ways their lack of education has held them back. He ignores the voices of former students who say they were robbed of opportunity. And he ignores the public’s interest in ensuring that taxpayer funds — yes, many of these schools receive millions in public subsidies — support real education, not religious training alone.
NYSED has a legal and moral duty to uphold the state’s education standards. Our lawmakers must allow the department to do its job — free from political interference and ideological posturing.
This is not about attacking religion. It’s about ensuring that every child, regardless of background or school type, has access to the tools needed to succeed in modern society. That is a shared value we should all be able to get behind.
New York’s leaders must reject these cynical, last-minute attempts to gut accountability. Our children — and our values — deserve better.
Bloomfield is professor of education leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center.