I am all for improving the quality of Secular education, but think that some of these standards are a bit of overreach.
I and all of my siblings went to Litvish Yeshivas/Bais Yaakovs (I, the black sheep, went to a Chabad HS, with a similar structure). For most of my schooling our Limudei chol was setup as follows:
- 2.5-3 hours a day
- Including Math, Science, History, English
- Nearly all of our teachers from 5th grade onward were state licensed, and had masters degrees. All of them taught the same subjects at public or other private schools in the morning.
- In HS, almost all of my Secular studies teachers had Masters or PhDs. About half of them also taught in local colleges.
- We all met or exceeded local and state standards.
By contrast, my kids are in more modern schools. The only key differences:
- There's a more balanced split between Chol and Kodesh (about 3.5 hours a day each in elementary school, vs about 4 hours each in HS).
- Based on the Judaic curriculum, my kids are about 1-2 years behind were their counterparts in more yeshivish schools would be (i.e. they start learning gemara in 6th grade as opposed to late 4th early 5th).
- While most of my Yeshivish friends college aspirations were CUNY or Touro at night, my kids' and their friends' aspirations are Ivies and State schools after their gap year.
So in order to meet this standard of 4.5 hours per day - even the most modern day schools would need to give up 1 hour of limudei kodesh in order to comply*.
I think a lot of the real complaints should be focused on Yeshivas that stop teaching limudei chol in 5th or 6th grade altogether. When I meet people who went to Yeshivas that taught nothing - I am a bit appalled. At the same time, there is a wide gap between nothing and 4.5 hours a day.
I wish the state would focus its efforts on quality rather than quantity. i.e. administering tests to ensure students met state standards.
*It's also possible, that modern yeshivas can use the amount of time focused on teaching hebrew as a language as part of this requirement which would help them over the hump