In November, Albany issued a new set of guidelines for the state’s independent schools that not only increase the requirements placed on these institutions but also authorize public-school administrators to evaluate local private schools. Yaakov Bender, the principal of a Jewish school in New York, argues that the new policies pose a threat to the freedom of religious parents, and parents in general, to determine the educations of their children:

The parents who choose our school do so . . . because they want an education that is rooted in Jewish texts and informed by Jewish morality, history, culture, ideals, and hopes. What they do not want is a curriculum chosen by the local school district [or] a school schedule that is subject to the approval of the local school board or teachers who answer to Albany. . . .

Religious [schools] are also concerned that control over the academic curriculum today will lead to control over the values they teach tomorrow. These concerns are not so easily dismissed.

Witness what is occurring in England, where an all-girls Orthodox school was recently designated “inadequate” [by government bureaucrats] because students did not receive “a full understanding of the world.” The school was criticized for not affirmatively promoting respect for same-sex marriage, for not providing sex education, and for not teaching evolution, which conflicts with the school’s religious beliefs. In the eyes of the UK Office for Standards in Education, this all added up to a failure to provide students with “a well-rounded education.”

However well-intentioned New York’s regulators of today may be, history teaches that once the autonomy of independent and religious schools is undermined, the reach of the state will only expand. Even now, the government has “offered” to evaluate our Jewish- studies classes, which are chock-full of academic and intellectual value. But an evaluation today will lead to a suggestion tomorrow and a mandate down the road.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.