After receiving heavy pressure from radical progressive advocacy groups the New York State Education Department (NYSED) made a crucial decision: Commissioner MaryEllen Elia handed the power to local school boards to veto the right for private schools to operate.

Those school boards can now determine whether private schools provide an education “substantially equivalent to that received in district public schools.” The term “substantially equivalent” refers to specific guidelines that the private schools must meet in order to provide equivalent education. None of those guidelines are about standards, but rather about secular material which must be taught in private schools. In reality the NYSED is attempting to dictate the content and form of secular education in private schools with different value systems.

Jewish educators are hit the hardest by this new change, because they have a distinct set of educational provisions not only in terms of curriculum but also in terms of school hours and unique emphasis they place on each subject. According to Elya Brudny and Yisroel Reisman, two Jewish educators, “The state government now requires private schools to offer a specific set of classes more comprehensive than what students in public schools must learn.”

Another slap in the face to private schools in NY is a requirement that all private schools incorporate specific amounts of time to address such progressive leftist issues as “gender fluidity” and alternate sexual lifestyles.

It is not the job of the state to determine what private schools should and shouldn’t teach. Most Christians parents look at the world created by the social left and they want to isolate their children from the immoral agenda that is peddled in public education. It is no secret that the progressives in America hate private schools and home schools, because that is one area in which they haven’t been able to gain control of, but it doesn’t mean that they have stopped trying.  The Progressives who are unrelenting in their quest to own the mind of every little child are forcing their way into private schools and mandating what can and can’t be taught.  Private Education has been a refuge for most parents living in progressive states like NY and California, but now even that refuge is being pulled out right from under them.