Day schools in the orthodox sector – a shifting landscape

Shani Bechhofer

pp. 729-747

in: Helena Miller, Lisa Grant, Alex Pomson (eds), International handbook of Jewish education, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

This chapter documents the composition and growth patterns of Orthodox Jewish education in America and the population of schools in that field. It then argues that, situated within a competitive marketplace of ideologies and institutions, Orthodox schools both reflect and shape contemporary dynamics within American Orthodoxy. Analysis at the field level begins by recognizing what may be the most salient twin circumstances of contemporary American Jewish schooling in the Orthodox sector. First, Orthodox schools comprise a decentralized organizational field operating in a competitive market environment. Second, these schools carry, perpetuate, and shape the cultural-reproductive aspirations of a number of ideological movements and strands within contemporary Orthodoxy. These circumstances interact to produce a variety of institutional and educational pressures upon schools. This chapter argues that they have shaped a field that has grown more diverse, more competitive, more ideologically differentiated, and also more innovative than ever.