In a recent Lookjed post, my friend Rabbi Aryeh Klapper offers a number of salient observations regarding the marketability of Jewish Day Schools. His argument runs along the following lines:
1. For many prospective families, the quality of a school’s academic program is a fundamental consideration in the selection a school for their children.
2. Historically speaking, relative to the competing private and public school alternatives, day schools have tended to measure up favorably in the academic arena. Moreover, day schools’ rigorous dual curriculum programs, which often place an emphasis on analytical subjects such as Talmud, have positioned day schools favorably vis-a-vis non-Jewish alternatives.
3. More recently, due to rising prosperity in our community, day schools increasingly find themselves competing with higher-end private schools, which often boast equal or even superior academic programs. Moreover, given day schools’ inherent need to provide both Judaic and general educations, it is unrealistic to expect day schools to be fully competitive with secular schools that enjoy the luxury of focusing on general studies alone.
4. Exacerbating the situation is many day schools’ newfound emphasis on religious inspiration, which comes at a certain cost to Judaic content and skills. While this shift may be necessary and even critically important, there is an inevitable tradeoff in terms of the rigor of our Judaic programs. This weakens the argument that Jewish day schools’ dual programs prepare their students for long-term academic achievement more effectively than their secular counterparts.
5. While being careful not to offer a definitive prescription, Rabbi Klapper closes by cautioning that the decreased emphasis on Judaic academic achievement may be causing some of our prospective families to turn away.
Without addressing every element of Rabbi Klapper’s cogent argument, I’d like to share two thoughts in response.
1. Certainly, the tension that Rabbi Klapper observes between religious inspiration and content mastery strikes a chord. I have heard countless colleagues from a wide variety of day schools voice their deep frustration with precisely this quandary. Rabbi Klapper is also correct that in the end, time is a zero sum game. Still, it’s worth noting that some of the newer pedagogies increasingly being implemented in day schools may help to ameliorate this tension. Current constructivist approaches, including inquiry- and project-based pedagogies, enable teachers to have at least some of their cakes and eat them too. This is especially true in regard to skill building, although less so when it comes to content mastery. A carefully designed project-based learning unit, for example, capitalizes on students’ intrinsic motivation while requiring them, as part of their research, to reinforce their reading and analytical Judaic studies skills. Some educators make the cogent argument that when students are motivated and engaged in their learning, we are likely to see improved outcomes not only academically but also in terms of religious commitment. While the tension between inspiration and content mastery remains, it might be less acute than we initially assume.
2. Although the academic pitch for day schools might be less potent than before, schools are learning new ways to make the value proposition. In particular, if I read the map correctly, it would appear that day schools, at least of the Modern Orthodox variety, are increasingly gravitating toward a more community-based model. In addition to marketing themselves as providing a stellar dual curriculum and co-curricular program for students, a number of day schools are positioning themselves as community centers.
A perusal of schools’ web pages offers a window into this phenomenon. Day school websites are replete with taglines such as “It’s more than a school, it’s a community†and “Not just a school, a community.†Some schools’ mission statements, including my own, state explicitly that their aim is to educate not only students but parents and the wider community as well.
There are numerous reasons for this striking development, which deserves more extensive treatment than this space allows. For our purposes, though, it suffices to observe that schools are finding fresh, non-academic ways of making the value proposition. When families feel that they are part of a school community, they grow increasingly engaged with the school’s mission. Faith institutions, as documented by Robert Putnam and others, are uniquely capable of fostering a “thick†sense of community. Having ventured out for community-wide events at the school, previously uninvolved parents grow increasingly likely to see the educational institution as a viable option for their children.
From this perspective, the proper lesson to draw from Rabbi Klapper’s observation is not only that schools ought to project the stellar achievements of their academic programs, as important as they might be. It also points to the importance of schools’ identifying additional value propositions, such as community, that are likely to prove attractive to families choosing between elite secular academic programs and local day schools.
Tzvi Sinensky
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 08:45AM by mlb.
