“We are pleased to join with other foundations dedicated to excellence in Jewish education by supporting the work of Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks,” said Mayberg Foundation Executive Director Todd Sukol upon the announcement of JTS’s relaunching of its program.
“The program’s outcomes align closely with the ultimate goals of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC), which we launched almost a decade ago to catalyze radical improvement in Jewish day schools. The Standards and Benchmarks team has supported teachers in an important shift in instruction with a focus on Jewish texts' relevance to the individual learner,” he continued.
“We see this as a crucial component of effective day school education that will have lasting impact on each child and, ultimately, the Jewish people.”
High-impact Jewish communities can only make effective change if we address challenges, pursue opportunities, and partner with others. Partnership with Purpose (PWP) builds diverse networks that revolve around shared visions and values and span across a variety of community purposes. We nurture the partnerships and relationships, understanding that every decision and collaboration must first start from a place of mutual trust. Success results in strengthening our community, schools, and institutions by being fiscally responsible, reducing overhead costs, sharing resources, and encouraging cross-pollination among our organizations.
The PWP model is built on trust of organizational leadership. There are, unfortunately, those who prefer to use the term “coopetition” meaning cooperation while being competitive. This mentality is destructive to community building and goes against the values of Partnership with Purpose. It fosters a sense of distrust and skepticism rather than building relationships anchored in our growth as a whole community.
Culture change takes times, especially when accompanied by practical systems and structures that need to change. People set emotional and habitual dependencies within patterns of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration which has worked well enough to be considered valid. To wit, our world could not make an instantaneous shift to alternative fuels despite the benefits. Among the many necessary transitions, first on many people’s mind would be to solve “How would all the current gasoline based cars on the road run?” So, too, for schools pursuing change.
When a school considers a new system for reporting student learning in Judaic Studies that does not use traditional grading as the barometer for success, one may see this as the domain of the professionals alone to make. The movement toward an unfamiliar definition of accomplishment, despite the overwhelming benefits, requires not only buy-in, but support from all groups in the Jewish Day School Ecosystem.
