The JCPA strongly supports private funding for Jewish day school education even while the American Jewish community has traditionally placed a high value on public education. Public schools play a central role in teaching democracy and common civic values and in fostering tolerance, respect, and appreciation for the diversity within our nation. The nation must move forcefully to address serious inadequacies and inequalities in many schools, especially urban schools, which enroll over 40 percent of low income and minority children. Plagued by limited resources, high concentrations of poverty and low expectations, these schools cannot educate all their students. Money properly spent can make a difference. Yet disparities continue in annual per pupil expenditure between the poorest and the wealthiest school districts. While greater federal investment is needed, federal dollars are currently only seven percent of education spending and cannot have an impact without added investment by states and local communities.

The JCPA supports legislation to ensure that resources reach the schools that need them, to equalize education spending, restore decaying buildings, enforce higher teaching standards, reduce class size, and ensure that qualified teachers are recruited and retained for all schools. Similarly, school-to-work opportunities should be funded and equal opportunities and services provided for students with special needs. We urge federal policy makers to develop incentives to guarantee well-prepared teachers in shortage fields and high need locations. Efforts to equalize educational opportunity should include providing access at all high schools to advance placement courses designed to give students exposure to college level work, so that students applying for college admission have the same opportunity regardless of where they went to school. Finally, in light of recent research in brain development during the earliest childhood years, support for programs that provide children with the best start in life are essential. The JCPA supports full funding for early childhood initiatives that enable children to enter school with the maximum potential to learn.

Volunteer involvement in public schools is equally vital, sustaining important mentoring and tutoring programs. The JCPA notes in particular the expansion of work by the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy, which has strengthened public education and the community while creating a cadre of advocates for public schools. The JCPA calls on local Jewish organizations to expand advocacy on behalf of public education. Finally, believing the diversion of precious resources will undermine the public school system, the JCPA opposes policies that divert resources from public schools, such as voucher programs that provide public dollars to non-public schools, whether secular or sectarian.

As public schools seek ways to expand their effectiveness and address new educational challenges, the JCPA will support sound innovative programs that improve public education. The JCPA believes that properly structured and monitored charter schools may prove to be one among several effective vehicles for education reform within the public school system. However, because charter schools operate free of many state regulations, effective safeguards and adequately funded monitoring procedures must be in place to protect against abuses as well as against educational failures. Therefore, while supporting continued experimentation with these schools, the JCPA will work to ensure that they meet appropriate accountability and performance criteria as set forth in its Resolution on Public Education and the Charter School Movement, adopted at the JCPA 2000 Plenum. Among these criteria, schools should: Establish and enforce appropriate measures for regular periodic fiscal and academic assessment; comply with federal and state anti-discrimination laws, health and safety regulations, and constitutional provisions regarding separation of church and state; be non-sectarian in program, admissions policies, employment practices and all other operations; require that teachers and students meet educational performance standards consistent with those for other public schools; incorporate adequate safeguards addressing working conditions and rights in contract and employment provisions for school employees; and provide appropriate safeguards to ensure against racial, ethnic and economic segregation and to prevent discrimination based on disability or special need.

The JCPA recognizes that there are concerns about the risk of diverting to charter schools scarce public dollars urgently needed to strengthen under-funded traditional public schools. We must work simultaneously, therefore, to re-evaluate state funding formulas so local districts are not penalized when charter schools are established.

Return to top of this page

DISSENT

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA) continues to favor educational choice programs. We believe that the Jewish community has traditionally been committed to principles including a commitment of social justice that seeks to minimize the role of wealth in securing one’s basic needs, and a desire to stem the tide of assimilation that should lead it to support school choice initiatives. Moreover, we concur with the Supreme Court’s well established reasoning that the Establishment Clause requires not hostility, but neutrality toward religious individuals and institutions. We join in expressing a commitment to a vibrant educational system, and we believe that school choice initiatives will improve the entire educational system for all of America’s children.

Return to top of this page