education « Rejewvenate!

Back to the Future with Jonathan Sarna

August 13, 2009 at 6:41 pm | In beliefs, culture, dating and marriage, economics, education, israel, orthodox, politics | Leave a Comment

The more I read of Jonathan Sarna, the more impressed I am with him personally, but the more I fear for institutional Judaism. Sarna is intelligent, considered, insightful and articulate, but he’s also an historian, and my feeling is that movements led by historians and sociologists rather than activists and entrepreneurs are already moving into their exhibit space at the museum.

I bring this up to comment on Sarna’s recent article in Reform Judaism Online, published by the URJ. Sarna has some thoughts to share looking backwards, and a few predictions for the future Judaism, inlcuding:

In the past, economic crises have caused American Judaism to turn inward and away from Israel and its troubles. It has also gutted educational spending, with terrible consequence.
Jewish institutional life tends to benefit from expansions in government services and social safety nets, as these free up significant funds and manpower for Jewish charities and social service organizations.
Expect to see lots of Jewish organizations go under, particularly in the hard-hit Orthodox sector, as we finally learn whose been swimming naked as the tide goes out. Mergers between Jewish instutions will increase, as will mergers between Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.

He’s got quite a few others, but I particularly want to focus on Dr. Sarna’s prediction that, as in the 1930s, American Judaism will turn inwards, and disengage to some extent with Israel. As evidence, Sarna cites the fact that fewer Jews are attending summer-long or semester-long programs in Israel.

My main objection to that piece of evidence is that it discounts Birthright Israel, which has sent over 200,000 Jews to Israel over the last decade. Much of the decline in summer and semester programs in Israel can be attributed to the fact that participants in those trips are ineligible for a Birthright tour, and many high-school students in particular have declined to go to Israel with their youth movements, synagogues, or schools precisely because they prefer to go on Birthright for free.

In any case, Sarna also points out that entirely endogamous Jewish couples are outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 by intermarried couples. If roughly 50 out of 100 Jews marry other Jews, you get 25 endogamous couples. That leaves another 50 Jews marrying 50 non-Jews, and thus you get that 2-to-1 ratio that is simply astonishing. Judaism in America has already been redefined on the ground, and we’re still left sorting out exactly what that might mean.

#tuitioncrisis : A Non-Fake Solution

June 21, 2009 at 8:15 pm | In economics, education | Leave a Comment

The Fake Solutions series (part 1, 2) is going twitter-style, at least for naming purposes. If your’e nto already following me on Twitter (rejewvenator) then you’re missing our on infrequent but always on-topic updates and links. I know, how did you manage this long without it?

Anyway, a great conversation on Lookjed, the Jewish educataors’ forum, about the “no-frills” day-school model was inspiring. It perfectly illustrated the problem and the solution to our tuition crisis.

First, the solution! Many of the professional educators on Lookjed have pointed out that 80-85% of a school’s operating budget is consumed by salaries. Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz, head of the JEC in Elizabeth, NJ, shared that his 900-student preK-12 school has an annual budget of $12 million, of which $10 million (about 83%) goes to salaries. I’d like to publicly thank Rabbi Teitz for his transparancy!

Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Right now, schools are working with a student-to-teacher ratio of about 15-18. Let’s assume that they’re at 18 right now. Pushing them up to 27 would mean we would save 33% on teacher salaries. I’m not sure what slice of the $10 million for salaries at the JEC go to classroom teachers, but I suspect it’s pretty high, and that slashing those costs by a third may help cut the overall budget by 15-20%. That’s a real savings. It would also likely mean that schools like the JEC, that have something like 14 grades and an average grade size of 60-70 will need to shift their models to become larger. School consolidation will lead to overhead savings too.

Some may rightly point out that there are lots of positions, even beyond the administrative ones, that are not classroom positions. You can have 27 kids in a class, but that decrease the demands on your resource room, for example. To me, this is symptomatic of the problem. Reading through the Lookjed conversation, I see more and more that mission creep is a significant factor in rising school costs.

Put aside extracurrciulars, which are cheap and a net positive for schools since parents view their existence as a significant value-add. Focus in on those things which require hiring additional staff. Here are a couple of quotes that caught my eye:

“I found the … suggestion about a “no-frills” day school fascinating, even attractive. But as someone who was a day school administrator for a number of years, I am curious as to the viability of such an initiative.

Aside from larger class sizes (which exist in many schools already) what, exactly, would those schools eliminate? Psychological services? Academic support services? Technology? Co-curricular activities?

Many parents would end up then paying for many of these same services privately, perhaps even at a greater cost than the day school can provide. There would be out-of-school sports teams and clubs, counseling and tutoring, all at considerable expense. The net result would be that the financially disadvantaged would be shut out of those very services and activities that they currently receive in schools.”

– Zvi Grumet, The Lookstein Center

Cutting programs is enticing, as it can be lead to cutting staff
positions. But as others have mentioned, do we cut our social worker
or learning lab staff? The reality is that school staffs are
significantly larger than they were even a decade or two ago. We hope
that the additional staff improves our product. I would not risk
cutting the programs to find out.

– The aforementioned R. Teitz

The first quote suggests that we have socialized many non-essential costs into the cost of schooling. While some children undoubtedly require psychological attention, why is the cost for this bundled into tuition? If there is no marginal cost for accessing expensive services, you can guarantee that they will be overutilized. I agree that we need to help provide essential services to families that can’t afford paying full freight, why is providing this service part of the mission of the school? Why does it pay for these services by building their cost into tuition? I suspect that social-service agencies are more capable of both providing the services at lower cost and fundraising (either directly, or through federations) on the basis of the services they do provide. The same can be said for tutoring (which is routinely handled by other schools through volunteer tutors), speech therapy, and so forth.

The second quote captures the problem exactly. Many people are quite dissatisfied with both the product of day school education and the price. Tani Foger makes the point eloquently, calling out schools for failing to teach Hebrew, Jewish values, and even religious observance to the level that might be expected. The trend of the last few decades towards more programs, more ‘intervention’, more resource rooms, and so on has led to an unwiedly school system that has an uncertain mission, no vision for how to achieve its mission given limited resources, and a constituent base that is clamoring for drastic change.

One point, at least, is clear. We have to spend less on teachers. That means that we either pay teachers (even) less, or we teach fewer things, or we hire fewer teachers and have them teach more kids. On balance, the latter two seem like better answers than the former, but let’s not kid ourselves. Those are the choices.

Fake Solutions To Our Tuition Crisis (pt 2)

June 15, 2009 at 7:34 am | In economics, education | 1 Comment

The Jewish Week reports that the UJA-Federation of NY is launching a $300 million endowment “superfund” to support Jewish day schools. The idea is that each school would raise up to $6 million for the fund, and the Feds would match with up to $3 million, or a 1:2 match. The entire sum would be held in trust by the Feds, and each school would be able to draw 5% of the maximum of $9 million, for a total of $450,000 per year.

I was truly astonished when I started putting the numbers together. According to the article, total day school costs in New York are are $1.5 billion, annually. If the most that can be drawn from the endowment fund is 5%, and the whole fund is $300 million, that means that only $15 million will be available from the fund annually, or just 1% of total costs.

Another puzzle is how these numbers all fit. If the target size of the fund is $300 million, at $9 million per school, that means we’re looking at 33-34 schools participating. How many Jewish day schools exist in NY? My guess is that it’s mroe than that, but I’m not really sure. If there are more, on what basis are certain schools being left behind? Also in question is why should schools turn over their endowment to the Feds for management? It suggests that they will cede significant control, including the right to draw more than 5% from the fund, should the need arise.

In the end, I agree with Gil Graff, the executive director of the BJE in LA, where a similar fund has been established. The amount is not sufficient to make any real dent, but an endowment project is a long-term solution that will take years to build to, and “it’s the kind of thing where if you don’t start, you never start.”

See Part I of the Fake Solutions series

Fake Solutions to our Tuition Crisis (pt 1)

May 10, 2009 at 12:50 am | In education, orthodox | 2 Comments

The OU has put out a self-serving bit of hogwash trumpeting its vaporous initiative to fix the tuition crisis plaguing the Orthodox community.

In brief, th OU presents a two-prong approach. The first is a cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing strategy for the near term. The cost-cutting elements are saving money by joining together with schools and other groups to obtain insurance as part of a large pool and taking advantage of energy efficient technologies to save more money. The revenue-enhancement comes through hiring grant-writers, encouraging people to use the OU internet toolbar, and setting up ‘Kehilla Funds’ whereby all members of the community donate money towards supporting the schools, even those members who don’t have children.
Let’s look at each aspect of this laughable proposal. Let’s say that the insurance savings are $100k per school, and the energy savings are another $100k – both well above estimate. The cost-cutting measures, estimated high, in a school of 500 students, lead to a savings of $400 per student, assuming all the savings go directly to lowering tuition, and average tuition, per the post, is $15k, you’ve now lowered tuition by a whopping 2.67%. Wow, that’s totally a “radical impact in terms of savings.” What nonsense.

As for the revenue-enhancing meaures, grant-writing is great, but if Jewish philanthropy in general is suffering, I don’t see how it helps that much. It’s just more organizations competing for a shrinking pool of money. To put things in perspective, every $500,000 raised can reduce tuition no more than $1,000, assuming 500 students per school. Even if every school raised another $500k through grants, we’d still have an enormous problem, and there’s no reason to believe that there’s $500k per school available to be raised, no matter how many grant-writers you hire.

As to the OU toolbar, that’s the biggest scam of all. Yes, a small handful of very broad-based organizations have used them successfully. Our community isn’t going to benefit that much, since we’re just not big enough. Moreover, it seems like the OU will suddenly become a grant-making org, channeling whatever money is raised to whichever school it likes. No details are provided about how the OU intends to make those decisions. And anyone who believes that you can make those kinds of funding decisions without spending quite a bit of money to create and support that decision-making apparatus doesn’t know anything about economics, or about philanthropy. This is nothing other than a thinly-disguised effort by the OU to squat on a source of revenue.

The last idea, of Kehilla Funds, doesn’t hold up either. In the Jewish world, the number of families with kids in school easily dwarfs those without. Those with kids are already paying, so know we’re dealing with just those without kids. Let’s say that out of 1000 Jewish families in a neighborhood there are 250 with no kids in school. Let’s say they all give the $360/year that the OU proposes = $90,000. Let’s say that the remaining 750 families average three kids in school at $15k/child. That’s a total tuition cost of over $33 million! The $90k we just raised into the ‘Kehilla’ fund doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

Tomorrow we’ll look at part 2, in which the OU tries to take credit for a grassroots community initiative. Stay tuned.

Changes Coming in Orthodox Education Options?

May 2, 2009 at 9:02 pm | In economics, education, israel, orthodox | Leave a Comment

An interesting article in the Jewish Standard suggests that parents are ready to explore new options for what a Modern Orthodox school could look like. As the tuition crisis overshadows the shidduch crisis, I’m finding myself more and more irritated by the total lack of vision and perspective displayed by both parents and leadership.

I attended Netiv Meir, a premiere yeshiva high school in Jerusalem, where most students dormed. The school was widely acknowledged as perhaps the best religious high schools, and one of the best high schools, period, in Israel.

Let me tell you a bit about my school. Our day began with davening at 7 am, and we finished our last class at about 6pm. Following davening and dinner we had night seder and study hall. We didn’t free up until 9pm Sunday through Thursday. Fridays were a half-day, and we stayed in every other Shabbat too. The school had about 500 students in four grades, and served three meals a day and maintained four dormitory buildings.

The key difference between this excellent school and American MO schools was the student-to-teacher ratio, and the approach to extracurriculars. In Netiv Meir, there were forty students to a class. That’s right, forty. In the article above, they talk about going from an 18:1 ratio at the expensive schools to a 25:1 ratio at a proposed cheaper school. Yet my school achieved academic excellence with a 40:1 ratio.

As for extracurriculars, there basically weren’t any. There were no athletic teams or choirs or anything of the sort. Anyway, who had the time? We spent as many as six hours a day learning Torah. Night seder was the extracurricular activity! Physical education was not neglected by any means – this school was training future soldiers in the IDF, and our gym classes involved reaching certain requirements for distance running, pushups, situps, and pullups.

We played sports in our free time, but not in organized leagues. There were no debate teams, but we did study three languages (Hebrew, English and Arabic – and Aramaic, I suppose), and everyone learned biology, chemisty, physics, algebra, geomety, trigonometry and calculus. We learned computer programming (on old computers perhaps, but we gained real knowledge), history, Tanach, literature and so on.

No class had a teacher’s aid. Most classes didn’t use fancy textbooks. Yet the graduates of this school knew more math, science, and Torah in 10th grade than any graduate of the MO instutions in New York like HAFTR, DRS, Flatbush, Ramaz, TABC, Frisch, and SAR.

We need to recalibrate our expectations and our sense of what is possible if we are going to create an exceptional and sustainable edcuational model for our communities. We need to questions orthodoxies like the idea that student-to-teacher ratios are critical, or that extracurriculars are required if our children arte going to get into good colleges, or that it’s ok for our kids to graduate high school without being fluent in Hebrew, and without being capable of learning a daf of Gemara on their own. We might also do well to acknowledge that day care, school, and summer camp are all related to the same need to educate our kids, socialize them, and free Mom and Dad to earn a living and maintain a household.

I’ve written a bit about possible alternative models for Jewish education on this blog. I fear I might not have been bold enough myself in proposing solutions but perhaps I was succesful in laying out some tradeoffs. What other fresh ideas are out there?

Online Jewish Educators

April 13, 2009 at 5:08 pm | In education | 1 Comment

I don’t normally post these kinds of notices, but this one looks really interesting, so here goes:

The Lookstein Center is inviting nominations for the first cohort of Fellows for the Jim Joseph Foundation Fellowships-Leading Educators Online program.

This two year professional development experience will provide 14 select participants with leadership development, enriched Jewish learning, and in-depth training in how to build online communities of practice.

The anticipated outcomes of the program include (1) enhanced skills and capabilities of accomplished leaders in the field of Jewish education and (2) unprecedented new opportunities for communication and collaboration for hundreds of Jewish educators who will be invited to participate in new
online communities of practice.

Participating Fellows will receive an annual stipend of $10,000 for each of the two years of the program, in addition to travel, room and board at the seminars and retreats. They will be currently employed in the U.S. in the field of informal and/or formal Jewish Education; have professional supervisory responsibilities; have demonstrated leadership in Jewish education and the vision the to stimulate, inspire and impact on others; have strong interpersonal skills that will enable him/her to collaborate (online) with others; be part of an organization that understands that importance in online networking and collaborative work; be comfortable working in a web 2.0 environment

Direct applications are not accepted; Fellows must be nominated. For more information and to nominate a candidate go to
http://www.lookstein.org/jjff.htm (or write the program directors, Esther Feldman or Shalom Berger at jjff@lookstein.org.)

Alternative Models for Jewish Education

March 12, 2009 at 10:03 pm | In culture, education, jewish denominations, orthodox, politics | 12 Comments

I’ve been reading a lot of posts about Jewish education, often in the context of the economic difficulties we are currently in. I’d like to just sketch a few alternative models for Jewish education that may be more sustainable than what we’ve got now.

Model 1:

Existing day schools slash costs and give a bare-bones offering. No extra-curriculars (or pay-as-you-go), no AP classes, and a scaled-back Judaics curriculum. High schools run for only three years and graduate students per the minimum state standards (like a NY Regents diploma). Access to education is increased, and quality instruction will still be available, but less will be taught. Students who want to get into top colleges will need to go elsewhere.

Model 2:

Community schools. For this to work, all denominations need to pull together to make the schools attractive to all. Secular studies will benefit from economies of scale, and facilities and overhead costs will be significantly reduced. Judaic studies can be offered on different tracks, so that parents can still have their children study the brand of Judaism they subscribe to. The big obstacle here is aprticipation of the Orthodox, most of whom would not send their children to a co-educational school, or to a school where they might be exposed to ‘heterodox’ children and influences.

Model 3:

Public schooling/Charter school followed by Talmud Torah/Hebrew School. Though this model can be economically affordable, it suffers two major flaws. For the Orthodox, sending your kdis to public school is the only thing worse than sending them to a community day school. For the non-Orthodox, Hebrew schools are usually a 4-6 hours/week commitment. Kids very quickly get the message that Hebrew School isn’t important. Little of educational value ends up being achieved, which only confirms that the exercise is not valuable.

Model 4:

Home-schooling networks. These are great ideas, especially for small communities, but I can’t imagine how these would scale up to meet the needs of large Jewish communites. That said, their existence will particularly benefit the Orthodox, for whom home-schooling wouldn’t carry mcuh of a stigma.

As for me, I would like to see Model 2, the community schools, become the dominant model. Enough already with all of our separate institutions and insistence on ideological purity. Teaching our kids together is the surest and swiftest path towards greater Jewish unity, appreciation of Jewish diversity, and flowering community.

Speculation on the Future of Orthodoxy

February 22, 2009 at 5:46 pm | In culture, economics, education, jewish denominations, orthodox | 8 Comments

The Orthodox community of the last few decades has seen itself as a community on the rise. The growth in numbers of adherents, the large families, and the explosion in the numbers of synagogues and schools attest to that rise, and feed into the phenomenon of Orthodx triumphalism that I personally find upsetting. Some, like Rabbi Harry Maryles at Emes V’Emunah, believe that this growth, and its concommitant rightward motion, will lead to a Hareidi future for Judaism.

As the market has taught us though, past results are no guarantee of future performance. And it is the market’s recent performance that makes me speculate on the future of Orthodoxy.

Dr. Jonathan Sarna, writing about this topic from the perspective of Jewish philanthropy, has identified a few trends that bode ill for the Orthodox community.

In most economic downturns, it is the weakest companies and institutions that take the biggest hits. Sarna points out that the Orthodox community faces a double-whammy. Not only are the Orthodox disproportionately emplyed in the banking and financial sectors that ahve been hardest-hit in this downturn, but Orthodox institutions are also the most vulnerable financially. On top of this, the Orthodox use two very expensive classes of institutions very heavily: synagogues and schools.

Based on the above, we might predict a few things. First, educational expenses will continue to rise, and many schools will be forced to close. Some Orthodox Jews will surely yank on the escape cord and make Aliyah. Others will be forced to consider other educational options for their children. Despite all the news about vouchers and charter schools, at this time, public school is the only real alternative.

The effects of this will be felt broadly. As Rabbi Maryles correctly points out, the Hareidi domination of Orthodox education has been a key factor in the general rightward tilt of Orthodoxy. But with fewer students attending these schools, and a lesser demand for teachers in Orthodox schools from right to left, the Hareidi economic system will come under even more pressure. Orthodox institutions, particularly those providing social services, will also be under tremendous strain, and some will surely fold. Organizations that provide what one might call ’shadow’ care – that is, services that are already avaiable through the government (eg Hatzalah ambulance service) or through non-Orthodox organizations will see their support dry up as critical charitable services receive top priority from stretched donors.

Taken together with the already-precarious economic structure that Orthodoxy rests upon, and what we have is the makings of a severe decline for Orthodoxy. Some will push further right, embrace lives of faith, poverty and subsistence on government programs. More will enter the workforce. As more Orthodox children attend public educational institutions, demand will rise for supplementary education that can help students navigate their more socially integrated lives. As an educator, I would guess that those precious hours in after-school programs will not be spent on learning how to decode the Talmud. Instead, the currciulum will focus on Jewish identity in a plural society.

All this may well be a boon to Orthodoxy, American Judaism, and American society as a whole. It will certainly erase many denominational lines, as Jews from across the denominational spectrum will all be faced with the same essential challenge of how to maintain a Jewish idenity and grow a vibrant Jewish culture without the help of ghetto walls. But it will be a difficult blow to the Orthodox community of today, and to many of its finest institutions.

Oh, That’s What Religion is Good For!

August 17, 2008 at 7:49 pm | In beliefs, culture, education | 2 Comments

A must-read paragraph:

Importantly, religious youth have a stronger sense of themselves than less religious youth. In other words, among the less religious, religion is not supplanted by a stronger ascribed or achieved characteristic. In fact, less religious youth are less strongly identified with anything at all, which suggests that religious group involvement is mutually reinforcing with other identities. Or, that feeling connected to a religious community or tradition heightens all other aspects of self-understanding. Religious adherence, in other words, builds social capital not just in terms of participation in civic life (more below), but also in terms of connection with family, self-esteem, and self-understanding. As Christian Smith finds in his study of teenagers, religious youth rank higher than less religious youth on every measure of self-esteem.

This from OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era.

For all those folks who wonder about the importance of religion in building societies, forging personal identities, and passing on crucial information from one generation to another, the above stands as a beacon. In my view, it is also a sharp retort to those who suggest that science has surpassed and supplanted religion.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

July 21, 2008 at 8:24 am | In culture, education | 1 Comment

I was reading a new blog this morning called Boundless Drama of Creation, and one post caught my eye. It was about how traditional Jewish institutions, be they synagogues or Federations, are interested in having young Jewish leaders fix what’s wrong with these institutions, when the blogger thinks that these young leaders need to be building something new.

I suppose the above tension is an ancient one. Dor holech v’dor ba – generations pass, and it’s out with the old, in with the new. Certainly, based on traditional measures including affiliation, philanthropy, attendance, and ritual observance these institutions have been rejected by the new generation of Jewish adults. But in the past ten years, new Jewish organizations have sprung up and found great success.

My theory is that the Federation system as a whole dictates a particular relationship structure between funders, professionals, and recipients of service, and it is this relationship model that has been rejected. Federations are fundraising and grant-making organizations. A Jewish community has a variety of social needs, from elder care to political action to education to ritual worship. Rather than having every social organization raise money individually, a Federation raises money from the entire community and allocates money to service organizations.

Already, we can see that the relationships will focus around who has versus who needs. The constituents of a Federation are its top donors. Those who receive services from charitable organizations are basically disempowered – they’re the needy ones. Those who care about a problem, but are neither wealthy nor interested in becoming Jewish professionals largely have no place in the process. Since raising money is no longer about creating relationships and sharing a vision with the Jewish community at large, but rather with a select few people at a Federation or other mega-donor, the entire process is insular, politically charged, and dominated by back room dealing.

The new organizations have fundamentally changed this paradigm. Take Hazon, whose mission is “to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community — as a step towards a healthier and more sustainable world for all.” Hazon does not offer a service to the needy. It offers a new vision for a Jewish relationship to food. It is a hybrid organization that offers education like a school, a vision for living everyday life (and programs to support that vision) like a synagogue, and raises and grants money like a Federation. Meaningful participation in Hazon is a bike-ride away!

It is not just the democratization of activism and involvement that makes Hazon or its bretheren (eg Hadar, Mazon, Storahtelling, Reboot, etc.) successful. It’s the fundamental shift away from building organizations that are meant to meet a need – to group the world into those who have problems and those who solve problems – and towards building organizations around ideological communities. There is likely still a role for the older-style institutions. After all, community needs do exist, and those needs can’t all be met through the newer style of organization, but the future belongs not to the synagogues and Federations of the past, but to the new wave of Jewish organizations.