The American Association for Jewish Education (AA JE), reporting on its quadrennial nationwide census of Jewish schools in the United States, disclosed this week that the “enrollment decline which has prevailed for nearly two decades appears finally to be leveling off.”
Arthur Brody, president of the AA JE, said that while enrollment in congregational, day, communal, Yiddish and independent schools dropped 8.9 percent from 1974-75 to 1978-79 to an estimated 357,107 students, the decline was “substantially less than those of 14.3 percent and 17.5 percent for the previous two four-year periods.”
Moreover, Brody said that a careful analysis of enrollment patterns “gives genuine cause for realistic optimism that the 1980s may see a gradual increase in the number of students receiving some kind of an institutionally sponsored Jewish education.”
A VERY SIGNIFICANT TREND
He said the AA JE was “greatly encouraged” by rises of 12.8 percent in the reported enrollment in nursery and kindergarten classes and of 6.8 percent in primary grades over the past 12 years, declaring: “This very significant trend represents the first tenuous signal that Jewish schools have begun to feel the impact of the second generation of children whose parents were born during the post-World War 11 ‘baby boom.’
“In addition, the babies born during the subsequent ‘boom’ in the early 1950s have now reached marriageable age and have begun to have children of their own, “Brody said. “As these children start to enter Jewish schools in the next decade, their added numbers may not only arrest the downward slide in enrollment but will hopefully reverse it.”
The AA JE president noted also that another trend influencing enrollment growth is the “ongoing intensification” of Jewish education — as evidenced by the continuing rise in the day school population over the past four years and by the marked swing away from one-day-a-week education in congregational schools toward classes meeting two days or more a week.
“The combination of these factors — all pointing toward more children receiving a more comprehensive Jewish education — should offer greater incentive to Jewish communal planners to address the ongoing problems of staffing, funding and operational maintenance of Jewish schools more forthrightly,” Brody said.
“By so doing, they will insure that the opportunity is not diminished for providing students with the knowledge and experiential values that will enable them to assume leadership positions in Jewish communal life in the years to come,” he said.
The census was conducted by the AA JE’s Department of Community Services, Information and Studies under the supervision of Department director Dr. George Pollak and with the active involvement of AA JE consultants Dr. Gerhard Lang and Paul Burstin. The sixth and by far the most thorough effort undertaken by the agency since 1958, it surveyed 183 communities which represent 96.4 percent of the total estimated Jewish population in the U.S. (Tomorrow: Part Two)
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