"Pervasively sectarian"

[Marc Stern]

 Michael must be too young to remember the great debate over state regulation
of church schools in the early 80's when even the most minor of regulations
(attendance records) were challenged as infringing on the schools exclusive
power to regulate the church's schools. Not all religious schools joined
these challenges (the Catholic schools, which are really in competition with
public schools for students, at least in suburban communities generally had
no problem with the regulations).Within the Orthodox community I suspect that
regulation whit any teeth will be problematic in inverse proportion to the
degree to which the school favors religious studies over secular knowledge
. One recent study indicated that the so-called modern orthodox schools do
fine on state standardized tests but the isolationist "Hasidic" schools are
doing poorly. These revelations have led to some soul searching but it is too
early to tell whether it will lead to improvements. Some of course blame the
poor results on finances, and claim that state aid would help. Three is of
course some truth to thus but it is also true that ideology (in my view at
least) is by far the greater culprit This ideology leads both to a
minimization of time spent on secular studies and the dismissal of their
significance in any number of ways.
I also note that at least some people affilaited wiht Christian schools have
expreseed doubts about the wisdom of any system of state funding because of
concern over the regualtion issue.I recognize these people probably represent
a minority view.
I say this simply to express mild concern about Michael's too easy dismissal
of the problem of insisting on reasonable standards.