Akiva: The Roads Ahead
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Student and std attrition, questions of intellectual identity
confront the school as it plans to move.
JULIE WIENER
Staff Writer
r
or years, Akiva Hebrew Day
School's home has been a
rundown building with
peeling paint, high heating
bills and a shortage of classrooms.
Now, the school has the opportuni-
ty to get a fresh start in a spacious and
freshly renovated structure, the former
site of Congregation Beth Achim on
12 Mile Road in Southfield.
But even if it improves its outward
surroundings, Akiva will still face a
slew of challenges, particularly in its
high school: shortage of funds, stag-
enroll-
nant — often declining
ment, a weak math and science cur-
riculum and a significant rate of
teacher turnover.
While its leadership says it is trying
to address these problems, the school
1999
8 Detroit Jewish News
seems to be at a crossroads on the
broader question of its identity.
Some former students and parents
say Akiva, founded in 1964 with the
motto the best of both worlds," is
losing its commitment to centrist
Orthodoxy, a Zionist wing of
Orthodox Judaism that values secular
and Jewish learning equally.
Citing the high school's academic
shortcomings, as well as its growing
tendency to separate girls and boys
and to hire faculty members with
more fundamentalist approaches to
Judaism, these critics fear that instead
of sticking to its founding principles,
Akiva is becoming a weaker version of
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah.
As the school prepares for the move
into a new building, Akiva's supporters
and critics alike fear that its high
school is in particular peril. It faces
the demands of a capital campaign,
the challenge of a shrinking centrist
Orthodox community and potential
competition from the Conservative
high school slated to open in 2000.
Akiva's leadership is taking steps to
improve the high school. At the urg-
ing of Federation, it has brought in a
consultant and is currently surveying
those who left the high school to find
out why.
The Problem Of Evaluation
Evaluating private schools is not simple.
Unlike public schools, private
schools in Michigan are not required
to participate in standardized tests nor
are they subject to much government
oversight.
In the local Jewish community, the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit's education division reviews
financial information from the day
schools that it funds. However,
Federation does not take internal edu-
cational issues into account in making
allocations decisions nor does it assess
the quality of the institutions it assists.
Patrick Bassett, president of the
Independent Schools Association of
Central States (ISACS), an accrediting,-/
organization for independent schools
in the Midwest, said no benchmarks
for assessing an educational institution
are universally accepted. But when
evaluating success, he said, it is impor-
tant to compare a school's results to its
stated goals and to assess parental sat-
isfaction levels.
"You want to look at whether peo-
ple keep coming back and the extent
to which they are pleased with the
program," he said.
Bassett noted that college prepara-
tory schools should offer "a rigorous
curriculum of year-long courses
through the senior year, advanced