The Berman Archive houses research by and about the American Jewish community, and Prizmah is a Jewish research juggernaut. Formed in 2016 through the merger of five legacy day school organizations, Prizmah has spent a decade building out data and research capacity. It now serves a network of over 300 Jewish day schools and yeshivas across North America, and in its 10th year, it has become one of the field’s most closely watched sources of hard numbers on enrollment, affordability, and the long-term impact of a Jewish day school education.
Leading that research effort is Odelia Epstein, Prizmah’s Associate Vice President of Knowledge, Research, and Data. We spoke with her about the record enrollment numbers making headlines this year, how her own Jewish education shapes the questions she asks, and what she hopes today’s research will mean for schools twenty years from now.
Tell us about your work and professional background.
Odelia Epstein: I’ve spent the last 8 years developing and building a knowledge, research, and data strategy for Jewish day schools in North America. The thread in my career is supporting Jewish organizational leaders to use data to support strategy in the Jewish communal sector; at JCCs, Yeshiva University and now at Prizmah. I knew I loved research and data from a young age, and early on served as a US Census enumerator for the 2010 US Census and as a researcher on contemporary antisemitism for the U.S State Department. Building on my passion for Jewish communal research, I am currently a Walder Fellow in Gratz College’s Executive PhD program in Jewish Studies. I am also a product of many childhood Jewish educational experiences, day school, Jewish camps, Israel trips and more.
You’ve been at Prizmah since early in your career, moving from benchmarking into running its entire research and data function. How has the field’s relationship to research changed over that time?
The biggest change I’ve seen is that research has become more central to how the Jewish day school field thinks about strategy. I’ve also noticed that the research being produced is action-oriented, and the communal research agenda includes day school attendance as an analysis category, pointing to a greater understanding of the centrality of day school in Jewish communities. Within the day school field, there has always been an interest in data, including within the five legacy organizations that came together to form Prizmah ten years ago. As one unified organization serving schools across North America across religious affiliations, we have been able to build a research agenda on a larger scale that is useful across more schools.
In the early days of Prizmah, we launched a Jewish day school finance and operations benchmarking project which grew from 20 schools to 130+ schools participating annually. That growth signifies how school leaders increasingly understand the utility of comparative data and landscape analysis.
Our strategy has expanded to support school leaders with data to drive decision-making through a North American Parent Survey. It provides school leaders with critical insights on parent perceptions along with benchmarks from other schools that provide context into how parents typically rate various aspects of school. At the field level, we developed a robust portfolio of landscape research that includes comprehensive enrollment reporting, research on day school affordability, and day school impact on Jewish life on campus. Most recently, we launched an exciting study on the impact of Jewish day school on adult outcomes.
What I’m seeing is that there is a great appetite for research and data about the Jewish day school and yeshiva landscape. Communal leaders need reliable information to inform strategic communal investment and focus. At the same time, many of our lay and professional school leaders understand that utilizing research to inform strategy ultimately leads to more meaningful outcomes. I’ve found that there is a spectrum of data usage on an individual professional level. We strive to move our network forward, meeting people where they are and helping them understand research is a tool they can use to strengthen their leadership. The goal is to support a vibrant day school ecosystem and its many stakeholders.
The new day school Landscape Report shows record enrollment across the network. What in that report surprised you, and what might the topline numbers obscure?
The enrollment landscape report found that from 2021-22 to 2025-26 there has been a steady increase in Jewish day school enrollment, rising from 94,000 to over 101,000 students. One of the findings I was most excited about was the increase in enrollment in Reform day schools, which had historically been struggling with enrollment.
The report depicts a network of schools that is growing. Looking at macro trends can at times obscure what is happening on the ground. We found that while two-thirds of schools increased enrollment, one-third decreased enrollment. The overall increase of the schools that grew was larger than the decreases of the schools that shrank. Many schools continue to face structural pressures related to affordability, competition, and shifting community demographics. It’s important to understand that the measured growth was not spread across all schools. We also know how challenging it can be for a school with declining enrollment to hear about the overall growth of the field.
You’ve pointed to Florida and the New York metro area as particular growth pockets. What’s driving that in those regions?
From 2021-22 to 2023-24, enrollment in the Prizmah network of schools in Florida increased overall by 1,300+ students. New York metro area Jewish day schools and yeshivas also gained over 1,300 students during this time.
While our research wasn’t designed to determine what caused it, we do see several factors that may help explain the growth in those areas. We’ve found that schools across North America have seen new families enroll in day school because of pervasive antisemitism and anti-Zionism. These families sought out Jewish day schools as nurturing Jewish environments for their children. We also know that many schools have invested in new educational excellence initiatives, potentially attracting new families. At the same time, the state of Florida has experienced large in-migration, beginning during Covid, and has also implemented a statewide scholarship program that made Jewish day school education more affordable to many families. In New York, some of the increase may be related to birth rates and the other factors hypothesized here.
One caveat about the numbers I shared earlier is that they are not inclusive of the Yeshivish and Hasidic school sector. We are currently involved in a partnership with a group of Jewish organizations to complete a wider enrollment census that includes their enrollment trends alongside Prizmah network school enrollment.
How does your personal relationship to Judaism shape the questions you think to ask, or the way you read the numbers?
To me this is a profound question. I see all my work through the lens of a mission and purpose to build the Jewish people.
In Parashat Bamidbar, the book of Numbers, God instructs Moshe to count the Jewish people using the phrase se’u et rosh, which means to “lift up their heads.” A census is not solely about counting people, it’s about dignifying people, lifting up their heads and their voices. I’ve spent a lot of time with enrollment numbers, and I take this passage with me.
Enrollment reporting is not solely about counting students. I work to ensure that people are not lost inside averages, not erased inside categories. To notice who is present. And to notice who might be missing.
Your research serves an immediate purpose in informing day school leaders on trends in the field, but we’re an archive, so we have to ask: How might day school leaders 10 or 20 years from now use some of the findings in these reports?
This is an apropos question, as it’s Prizmah’s 10th anniversary and we have spent time reflecting on the last 10 years as well as the next 10 years. Thinking about our enrollment research over the last 10 years, I think we’ve documented important trends in Jewish day schools. We’ve reported on how schools pivoted during Covid, taking in families who were new to day school. We’ve reported on enrollment shifts occurring since October 7th, first with the enrollment of temporary Israelis who left Israel immediately after 10/7 and then with the new student enrollment related to the rise in antisemitism. We’ve been able to share how day school alumni differ from other Jewish students on college campuses in terms of their engagement in Jewish life and connection to their Jewish identity. I think in the future we can look back and ask, which changes lasted? Which investments made an impact? Where did the field grow, contract, or transform? In that sense, the research is both a tool for decisions today and a way of documenting the past that will help the future understand how it got there.
Is there one document or finding from your research career that’s stuck with you? Are there any older writings about day schools that you think about regularly?
Prizmah’s work to advance Jewish day schools is built on the work of our predecessors and in relationship with the larger communal ecosystem. I often refer back to research conducted in the past about Jewish education, work that points to the impact of Jewish day school and the breadth of students engaged. One piece of research that I frequently reference is The Jewish Education of Today’s Jewish Leadership: Day Schools, Overnight Camps, & Other Educational Experiences among Lay & Professional Jewish Communal Leaders by Research Success Technologies, which found that adults in Jewish leadership positions were widely exposed in their youth to numerous educational experiences, far higher than the Jewish public at large. As many as a third went to Jewish day schools from grades K through 8, and 2/3 of them — or 23% of the total — continued on with day schools during their high school years.
Family Matters: Jewish Education in an Age of Choice, edited by Jack Wertheimer, is another powerful resource on the impact of day school, specifically the chapter “The Differential Impact of Jewish Education on Adult Jewish Identity,” which explores the magnitude of impact on adult Jewish identity associated with each of the major instruments of childhood and adolescent Jewish education, net of confounding factors such as parental Jewish identity, and which types of Jewish education affect which particular dimensions of adult Jewish identity. Our recent enrollment landscape report also built directly on the last Jewish day school census, A Census of Jewish Day Schools 2018-2019, which documented changes in Jewish day school enrollment across affiliations over many decades.
Ultimately, I see research as a tool in service of the Jewish people. The numbers can help us understand where we are, but their greatest value is in helping leaders make thoughtful decisions about where we go next. My hope is that the work we are doing today strengthens Jewish day schools now, and also is a strong foundation for future generations to grow on as they continue building vibrant Jewish communities.
Odelia Epstein is Associate Vice President of Knowledge, Research, and Data at Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, where she leads the organization’s research, benchmarking, and evaluation work. She is a Walder Fellow in the Executive PhD program in Jewish Studies at Gratz College.
