Author and activist Nikole Hannah-Jones published an emotional essay in the New York Times Magazine last week titled “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” In the piece, Hannah-Jones writes about the consequences of having deliberately selected a school for her daughter, Najya, that was “low-income and mostly Black” as a way of advancing “the collective good,” not Najya’s “individual advantage.”
Hannah-Jones and her husband thought they could improve conditions at the school. Indeed, there’s a video making the rounds on X that shows Hannah-Jones confidently asserting, “A New York Times reporter in a high-poverty school f*cking changes the school, right? There are certain things that are just not gonna happen in that school. I can go to that school and say, ‘There’s a problem,’ and it gets fixed immediately.”
But it didn’t turn out that way. And Najya became progressively more unhappy as time went on.
In seventh grade, after seeing how low her school ranked — and fully understanding what that meant for her own future academic prospects — Najya asked her mother, “Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” When Hannah-Jones tried to explain the basis for the decision, Najya retorted, “So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to? Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”
Well before Najya reached seventh grade, Hannah-Jones knew how poor her daughter’s education was. In first grade, Hannah-Jones visited Najya’s school — P.S. 307 — during lunch and was horrified to see Najya and her little classmates sitting at a table in the cafeteria with no lunch, as other children ran wild around the room hitting each other while the adults in the room did nothing.
Hannah-Jones admits that “all but one of the White children and nearly all the middle-class children” who had started pre-K with their daughter had already left. But the Hannah-Joneses were determined to stick it out.
Things did not improve. The principal was unresponsive. Najya’s third-grade teacher was often absent, and sometimes there was no substitute teacher. Her fourth-grade teacher never performed the required reading assessments. When Hannah-Jones checked Najya’s homework assignments, she discovered that neither her writing nor her math homework had ever been graded.
They switched schools. But Najya’s new school was little better. And when Hannah-Jones and her husband allowed Najya to select her own high school, she chose one with a reputation for rigor and discovered that she was wholly unprepared for the work required. Happily, private tutors and teachers who were willing to devote extra time helped Najya get caught up, and she is now flourishing. But the same cannot be said of other students in schools like the ones Najya left.
Hannah-Jones’ essay is poignant and heartfelt. She is honest about how the decision she and her husband made negatively affected their daughter. But she seems to be clinging to the same tired and painfully inadequate explanations for the problems in our schools.
For example, she continues to refer to the educational system as “segregated.” But no laws are keeping Black and white school children apart. Instead, Hannah-Jones blames school choice for the “segregation.” She witnessed firsthand the lack of standards — both academic and behavioral — that plagued the schools she and her husband had chosen for Najya. Despite their visibility, influence and money, they could not change things, and they ultimately realized that Najya deserved better. Does she think other parents should be forced to send their children to failing schools?
Hannah-Jones complains throughout the essay about lack of resources. But the public grade school Najya attended spends over $50,000 per student, annually. On average, New York City spends $44,000 per student per year. Those sums would pay for a year’s tuition at a good private college or university. And yet only 29% of the city’s eighth-grade students are proficient in reading. Only 23% are proficient in math.
New York City isn’t unique. Chicago spends more than $27,000 per student annually, and only about 25% can read at grade level; even fewer can do grade-appropriate math. Washington, D.C., spends more than $36,000 per student, and only 39% have proficiency in English; only 28% are proficient in math.
A new report was released this week showing the performance of 15-year-olds in math around the world. China was first. The United States came in at an embarrassing 27th. And if it weren’t for the existence of private schools, we’d probably be close to the bottom.
The problem with our schools isn’t money. It’s that we have eroded standards because a bunch of people wrote academic papers for tenure claiming that standards are “racist,” and educators went along with it because it was easier than addressing the actual issues.
By way of example, the state of Oregon eliminated its English, math and science literacy requirements for high school graduation three years ago because minorities disproportionately couldn’t pass the tests. Instead of having honest conversations about why certain students couldn’t pass the tests, they simply got rid of the tests. (New York is arguably worse; it eliminated the English literacy test — for teachers — because 56% of Hispanic teachers and 62% of Black teachers could not pass it.)
(Unsurprisingly, these practices — and the problems they do not solve — have moved up the academic food chain. In response to inadequate preparation in high schools, many colleges and universities have lowered their admissions standards; it then becomes necessary to provide remedial courses to accommodate students who arrive ill-prepared — or flatly unprepared — for college work.)
Behavioral standards are a foregone conclusion as well. Hannah-Jones was appalled to see children running amok in the cafeteria at P.S. 307. But that was mild compared to the violence that occurs with distressing regularity at schools across the country — attacks by students against fellow students as well as teachers and administrators.
The lowering or outright elimination of standards is touted as a way to address “systemic racism.” But as one of Najya’s teachers tearfully told Hannah-Jones, what is racist is the assumption that a child cannot behave, cannot perform academically, just because of the color or his or her skin.
The problem is cultural, not racial. Plenty of Black children do well in school, and plenty of white children do not. The reasons can be traced back not to their race but to their upbringing, the climate and culture at home, and the presence — or absence — of adults in their lives who hold them to account.
If parents will not impose standards, then educators must.
Refusing to do so is not “antiracist,” “compassionate” or “progressive.” On the contrary, it is demeaning, insulting and inexcusable. It is also arguably immoral, because it condemns huge numbers of American children to lives of poverty and economic struggle that is avoidable.
Najya Hannah-Jones’ parents ultimately demanded better for their daughter. We must do the same for children whose parents do not.
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