1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones intentionally sent her daughter to a bad, inner-city school in the New York City public school system even though she could have afforded the absolute best. It started out okay, but after a few years the administration at the school changed, fights started breaking out at lunch, her daughter's grades were dropping, and still, Hannah-Jones kept her daughter in the school. Mom and dad kept trying to make changes at the school, get involved, give to the PTA, but nothing seemed to really improve their daughter's education. In writing it up, she asked "In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?" The answer, according to her own daughter, is "yes."
For middle school, they made a similar choice, sending their daughter to a neighborhood school, albeit one that was diligently trying to make things better. It didn't work. Their daughter wasn't doing better and even when her grades were good they were not an actual reflection of what she knew. She thought she was doing well in math, but it turned out that she was not. Grades didn't match facts. When her daughter finished 8th grade, she posted "Baby girl graduated 8th grade tonight and this is what a loving, nurturing educational community looks like. Grateful for the community of scholars @uaunison has supported, for the dedicated educators and parents who uplift these babies every day. As our principal Ms. Emily said tonight: There are too many schools that close their doors to too many kids. At Unison our school is open to any child and we love and educate them all."
When it was time for high school, Hannah-Jones and her husband let their daughter choose her school. She wanted to go to one of the NYC top public schools Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Staten Island Tech, all of which require high SHSAT for entry. Due to years subjected to a floundering education, she could not make the grade. Hannah-Jones has spent years railing against the specialized testing and also against screened schools and gifted and talented programs, where students are evaluated for entry. She said they were racist. Now, that was where her daughter wanted to go. She wanted a good education, regardless of her mother's political theory.
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Hannah-Jones complained about what she said were funding disparities—which she cites in her latest article. The problem is that this is an old narrative. New York City Public Schools spend a great deal of money on each student. The "per-pupil funding" at the middle school where Hannah-Jones sent her daughter is $32,418 per year for the 2024-25 school year, and it's ranked at 450th in NYC. New York City Fair Student Funding makes sure that disadvantaged students get extra. For reference, the school where I sent my son in Brooklyn, McKinley Junior High, paid $16,960 per student for the same period and it's ranked 70th in the city. His school was primarily Middle Eastern, Asian and Hispanic students. That's not a money thing, that's a culture thing.
When she gave her daughter the option to choose any school in the city, she chose a screened school, one where students are challenged. Hannah-Jones reveals that her daughter has had a hard time acclimating to the higher standards.
Hannah-Jones went to a mostly white school in her small town where she was bussed to that district. Her husband was an army brat and went to school on military bases. Both got relatively good educations. So why did Hannah-Jones academically cripple her only child? She explains in the Times:
"Faraji and I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage... Faraji and I decided that our role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and sending our child not to a wealthy white school but to a poor [b]lack one." She goes on, saying they "thought that by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and [b]lack school, we could help improve it for all the children there."
Hannah-Jones believes so fully in the idea of privilege that she thinks that her privilege had enough power to fix an entire school, that her money and influence was large enough to not just do right by her own child, but to extend that privilege to all the kids in an impoverished school district. None of us has ever heard of a white or Asian family who chose the worse options for their child in an attempt to benefit other people's children. White and Asian parents have fought for academic opportunity not as a means to denigrate black students but for the sole purpose of advancing their own children's success.
Just a few years ago, in 2024, Hannah-Jones reflected on her decision to send her child to failing schools. She wrote "My daughter is not worth more than any other child. Eight years later, I still know I made the right choice." Now, just a few years later, she has come face to face with the reality that her daughter does not know basic math. Hannah-Jones could have given every opportunity to her daughter, but she chose instead to let her languish a school that was not serving her.
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By the time she was in middle school, her daughter was horrified. "So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?" She grilled her mom. "Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn't want to put me in a great school?"
"Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted," she told her mom. Hannah-Jones finally had to admit that she feels like her daughter "got cheated," and she said "I'm sorry for that." But that's not really enough. "I acknowledge to you that I didn't do the best for you, and I am so sorry," she told her daughter. But she's in high school now, how can that ever be made up for?
Hannah-Jones has won a MacArthur Genius Award for her own work, but she couldn't see that the road that she traveled to get there was one with the same academic rigor she refused to provide for her own child. When her daughter read the latest missive in the Times, opining about her parents' attempt to force political theory onto her education, she told gave her mom the feedback that she "was not hard enough" on herself. Her daughter also said she was glad she "had not spent her early years in a white environment," a sentiment Hannah-Jones seems pretty proud of.
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Hannah-Jones wanted to live out her political values, but she didn't have to, she'd already been educated; instead, she forced her daughter to live out her values. Her belief was that the schools just needed a little cash flow and parental involvement, but the problems in these schools is not that parents don't care or there's not enough money; the problems are cultural. Teachers don't teach. Administrators don't hold students or teachers accountable.
I read the article while on a little hike near my rural town on Sunday. My son had attended Brooklyn schools. Me and his dad did everything we could to get him into the best school we could, moving to one of the better school districts in Brooklyn, District 20, in hopes that he would get a properly rigorous academic education. There were difficulties. There were discipline problems. Teachers tried to teach him that he and his entire family was racist while teaching the Middle Eastern, Asian and Hispanic students that they were victims.
There was no way that I was going to be able to change anything about that in his school. Teachers who didn't agree with the pervasive anti-racism education were effectively silenced by their union, they knew they had to be quiet or risk being ostracized. Most people aren't up for that kind of social shaming. I moved my son out of that school system. I want him to have the best possible education available. My only regret is that I can't provide them with the kind of education I got when I was a kid. It just doesn't exist anymore—and the implementation of political ideas espoused by Hannah-Jones and her ilk are the reason why.
Rigor has been deadened so that the worst kids can have the best chance, leaving the best kids' potential squandered. New York state just ended the requirement of high-pressure Regents exams to graduate, meaning even more kids will pass through the system without any awareness of how little they know. Political ideology has no place in education, instead, children should be taught at the highest possible standard and should be challenged. It's time that we stop experimenting on our kids just to prove what we already knew: a culture of high standards in education lets the best students rise and the worst students fail. Catering to the lowest standards brings everyone down.
This article originally appeared in Libby Emmons' newsletter, you can subscribe here.
