Defining Academic Excellence in our Jewish Day Schools and Yeshivot
Defining academic excellence in our day schools and yeshivot is where most schools get it wrong.
Most define academic excellence as high test scores and good college acceptances.
Friends, that’s not excellence. That’s just a good prep school. A public school can do that just as well.
If that’s the definition, why have a yeshiva at all?
Academic excellence in a day school and yeshiva has to be something a secular school can never offer. It has to be excellence in both worlds, and excellence in making them talk and interact with each other.
The following is how the best schools in America define it today. Its defined not as one component of education, but as 5 layers. If you are missing any layer, you are just not excellent.
Excellence in limudei kodesh should never be about what students know but who they become in limud Torah.
For example, a mediocre yeshiva or day school will ask how many pages of gemara did you cover? But an excellent school will ask does this student want to open a gemara at 10pm on his own when no one is watching?
Excellence in limudei kodesh means 3 things:
1) Fluency should not be confused with coverage.
Can the 8th grader actually read a Rashi inside a Chumash without vowels? Can a 12th grader open any Mishnah Berurah and know what to do? If you cover 100 blatt but students can’t learn by themselves, chances are that the school failed.
An excellent day school or yeshiva has a scope and sequence which demands that by the end of 5th grade, the student should be fluent in Chumash with Rashi. By the end of 8th grade the student can learn a Mishnah independently; and, by the time the student graduates or leaves 12th grade, he can offer a 10-minute dvar Torah from a Gemara source.
2) Ahavat HaTorah is not just Yediat HaTorah.
Do the students love Torah? Do they have a chevruta they enjoy? Do they argue about a Rambam while on a lunch break or during recess? The best metric is observing what students do during free time on a Shabbaton. If they go outside to play ball, you have a school. If some of them remain to hear diverei Torah or a shiur, you have excellence.
3) Torah that lives and thrives.
Can a child use Torah to answer real-life questions? If his friend is being bullied can he bring a source as to why bullying is forbidden? If he sees or hears suffering in Israel does he know which perek of tehillim to recite?
Excellence is when Torah is not a subject, but rather a lens, a road map and a way of life.
Excellence in limudei chol is not test prep, but thinking.
Most can obtain a tutor and get a score of 1400 on the SAT.
Excellence in general studies means we produce Jewish thinkers, not just good test takers.
An excellent secular program has the following:
A) Depth over breadth and do not offer 20 APs to look good in the community or in the school’s recruitment brochure. Rather, they offer 8 APs taught at a true college level, where students learn to write, argue, and question. A Jewish child should be the best writer in the room, because we come from a people of the book. If your seniors can’t write a 10-page (non-AI-guided or assisted) research paper with sources, your school is far from being excellent.)
B) A secular school teaches science. An excellent day school teaches how through science students see the wisdom of HaShem in creation, and how does understanding DNA encourage or inspire a student to say ‘Ma Rabu Maasecha HaShem’? Integration is not fake, it’s real.
C) Real-world readiness. Do your school’s graduates put on tefillin every day and wear tzizit ? Will your graduates be in college with kids who went to elite prep schools and compete with them by speaking clearly; are they able to defend Israel in a hostile seminar? And finally, are they able to manage time, handle stress, or write an email to a professor? That’s excellence.
Excellence in character is a trait or midda which every day school claims, but very few actually measure.
The Chazon Ish is reported to have said that the purpose of a yeshiva is not to create great scholars, but to create great Jews.
An excellent school views and defines middot as academic.
How does one measure it? By observing if the student says “thank you” to the janitor, helps someone carry groceries or assists an elderly person cross a busy street.
Do your students stand up when a rebbe, teacher or an adult walks into a classroom because they really WANT to, and not because they have to or because its school protocol.?
What happens when no teacher is in the room?
How do they treat the weakest or shyest student in the class?
The best Jewish day schools and yeshivot in America have a “Derech Eretz Report Card” alongside the school’s academic one. It grades middot and derech eretz attributes such as kavod habriyot, emet, chesed and achrayut. And parents view these grades as seriously as they do math or physics
If your school graduates a student who got accepted into Harvard but does not exhibit middot tovot, you did not achieve academic excellence. You actually had academic failure.
Excellence in Israel, Jewish Identity and Jewish Peoplehood
An excellent yeshiva day school in 2026 must answer the question, after 4 years, does this child feel responsible for the Jewish people? or do 12 graders know the name of a hostage, a soldier who fell, or a family in Southern Israel?
Does the student feel that when a Jew is harassed or hurt in Paris, he also feels hurt?
Does he understand that Eretz Yisrael is not a political concern or debate, but rather his home, homeland and birthright?
After the recent Dubai airline tragedy where 182 Jews almost crashed into the Kirya – did the student in your school daven for the pilot? Did they talk about it? Did they recite tehillim? Or was it just another news headline from the middle-east?
Excellence means our kids don’t read about Am Yisrael. They feel they ARE Am Yisrael. They don’t talk about achdut, they feel and support achdut
Excellence in growth is the most important metric.
The top 5 day schools in America don’t define excellence as “how smart their students are when they come in? but rather “how much did each child grow while attending the school ?”
A school that accepts only genius or gifted students who already read Gemara and gets them to read Gemara is not excellent. It’s selective.
A school that takes a student who couldn’t read the Aleph-Bet in 1st grade and has him leining in shul in 5th grade is considered excellent.
A school that takes a student with anxiety who never spoke up and has him give a drasha in 12th grade is excellent.
Always measure growth
In a school of excellence, every student receives a personal growth plan for kodesh, chol, and middot.
Twice a year, teachers ask where was this student in September, and where is he or she now? They celebrate growth as loudly and as publicly as they celebrate the top award.
So what is the one-sentence definition of academic excellence in our yeshiva day schools?
It is when every child learns to love learning Torah, masters how to think clearly in both kodesh and secular wisdom, lives with derech eretz, feels responsible for amcha and for his land, and grows more than anyone thought possible.
If you can measure all 5 ( while most schools can only measure 2), you are not just a yeshiva day school, you are a day school and yeshiva of excellence.
And that’s what Klal Yisrael is in desperate need of right now – real excellence!