Substantial Equivalency and Private Education: Regulating Schools or Regulating Religion?

• In Event: Negotiating Private Interests and the the Public Good With School Choice

Abstract

This paper examines how a New York state mandate requiring all private schools to provide a “substantially equivalent” education impacts Hasidic schools in New York city. An intense debate has erupted over this question in recent years, but to date no scholarship has examined directly the education offered by these schools. This paper presents site data from four such schools and argues that their unusual curricula complicate the question of equivalence, raising important questions about freedom of religion and legitimate state interests.

Author

• Moshe Krakowski, Yeshiva University