MEDIA CONTACT:
Josh Silberberg
PlusPR
jsilberberg@pluspr.com
NEW YORK, NY – On Monday, Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, announced that its members accounted for 63 percent of all comments received by the federal government ahead of the US Department of Education (DOE)'s biennial Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) survey. Hadassah is advocating for a question to be added to the survey on whether schools include Holocaust education in their curricula. In 2020, Hadassah members represented the overwhelming majority of respondents in the CRDC’s public comment period which led to the CRDC collecting comprehensive data on school bullying on the basis of religion.
The CRDC “collect[s] data on key education and civil rights issues in our nation's public schools” which inform the “overall strategy for administering and enforcing the civil rights statutes for which [DOE] is responsible.”
“Parents and educators recognize that children are entering a world that is increasingly divided, dangerous and violent. It’s not normal that Rabbis and congregants have been taken hostage or killed, Jews are attacked on city streets, Nazi swastikas are increasingly prevalent and social media is teeming with antisemitic content. To build a safer and more tolerant world, we must prepare children to live in a diverse and inclusive nation, and there is no better vehicle to do so than teaching the lessons of the Holocaust,” said HWZOA National President Rhoda Smolow. “There is no reliable data on whether and how schools are incorporating lessons of the Holocaust into classroom instruction. The Department of Education has a critical role to play in closing this knowledge gap. We urge Secretary Miguel Cardona to ensure the next CRDC survey helps the nation better understand where students are unexposed.”
Hadassah members continue to lead the nation in advocating for policies that equip educators to teach the Holocaust accurately and confidently, and in establishing state mandates to teach students about the Holocaust in public schools. Hadassah built critical support for landmark federal legislation supporting Holocaust education, and its members in Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada and Ohio have appeared before state legislatures in support of state mandates.