The writer behind the New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project deliberately sent her daughter in poor New York City schools as a “sacrifice” in an attempt to help the struggling eduction system.
asserted
writer → send → system
But now the teen is boiling angry — and badly behind her peers finally being allowed to enroll in a more rigorous high school, she revealed in a bombshell essay.
asserted
she → boil → essay
Nikole Hannah-Jones, 50, enrolled her only child in two struggling Brooklyn public schools beginning in 2015 — as part of a battle to change what she characterized as systemic racism, despite having the “connections and time and status” to get the girl into the city’s best schools, she wrote in the Times Magazine Sunday.
asserted
she → enrol → Magazine
That status included top-notch education of her own and financial security — she and her husband bought a $1.5 million Bed-Stuy brownstone in 2018 — but she still decided to offer up her daughter’s education for the cause of bettering the experience of black students in city schools.
asserted
she → include → schools
By her own accounting, Hannah-Jones’ daughter Najya knows she was cheated by her parents.
asserted
she → know → parents
“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” the girl yelled in one fight, according to the essay.
uncertain
girl → have → essay
“Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”
asserted
you → disadvantage → school
“We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there,” Hannah-Jones said of her decision.
uncertain
Jones → think → decision
“We believed strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families with similar values to do the same.”
asserted
it → believe → same
“I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage,” she added.
asserted
she → feel → good
But after years at the schools — PS 307 and Urban Assembly Unison, a specialty middle school — Hannah-Jones discovered her sharp-witted daughter lacked the basic skills to keep up in high school.
asserted
daughter → discover → school
And the girl was furious her own family put the community’s needs before hers.
asserted
family → put → hers
“Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me,” Hannah-Jones’ now-16-year-old daughter, Najya, said during a confrontation over the summer.
“I never really got the education I wanted.”
asserted
I → wish → education
And Hannah-Jones had to agree, telling her daughter, “I feel like you got cheated” during that conversation and admitting in the essay she may have “failed” her daughter.
uncertain
she → have → daughter
“Najya was asking what I’d accomplished by not choosing the ‘best’ school for her,” Hannah-Jones wrote.
asserted
Jones → ask → her
“The honest answer is, I don’t know.
asserted
I → know → ?
When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child.”
asserted
I → come → values
Hannah-Jones herself went to a below-average high school in her hometown in Iowa — but then went on to attend the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, both highly regarded schools.
asserted
Jones → go → Carolina
PS 307, near DUMBO in Brooklyn, had a 56% black student body, and just 19% of students met state standards on English — well below the citywide average of about 40% of students in 2016, according to Department of Education figures.
uncertain
% → have → figures
Nearly 40% of students had special needs.
asserted
% → have → needs
Urban Assembly Unison, between Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, has a 69% black student body and 40% of students met state standards in 2024 — compared to 55% for middle schools city-wide.
asserted
% → have → schools
About one-third of students have special needs.
asserted
third → have → needs
The extensive essay was a follow-up to one she wrote in 2016 first explaining her decision to enroll Najya in local Brooklyn public schools, which she described as being deeply segregated and lacking both the funding and ability to competently teach and supervise their largely-impoverished student body.
asserted
she → write → body
That essay went viral and sparked national dialogues about race in American schools, while also helping establish Hannah-Jones’ career as a leading name in black studies before she helped created the 1619 Project — a hotly-debated and massively successful series of books, podcasts and other media which argued slavery was the most importnat throughline of all American history.
asserted
slavery → go → history
Ten years later, Najya found herself in schools so overwhelmed that they’d stopped assigning homework or providing basic supervision during the school day.
asserted
they → find → day
In one shocking revelation during Najya’s 4th grade, Hannah-Jones discovered the girl’s teachers hadn’t been grading her schoolwork — and that her supposed proficiency was complete nonsense.
asserted
proficiency → discover → schoolwork
“Najya believed herself to be good at math — it was her favorite subject.
asserted
it → believe → math
But now I understood she thought she was correctly solving all her problems because her teacher was not checking her work,” the distraught mother wrote.
asserted
mother → understand → work
“I sat there silently for several minutes, conjuring the image of my little girl thinking she was soaring in class when she was failing, and my devastation morphed into hot rage,” she said.
asserted
she → sit → rage
Despite that fury, Hannah-Jones kept her daughter enrolled in local public schools once she reached the 6th grade — and even though Najya was sent to a middle school with an admired and sympathetic principal, the girl was soon complaining that studious kids were neglected while misbehavior would get attention.
asserted
misbehavior → keep → attention
Najya’s complaints came to ahead as she neared high school and found her schools’ struggling scores online — sparking an explosive fight between mother and daughter.
asserted
she → come → mother
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” Najya said, before her mother explained her reasoning.
asserted
mother → know → reasoning
It wasn’t long before Najya insisted she be allowed to choose her own high school, and Hannah-Jones finally agreed — only for Najya to get there and teachers to discover she was woefully behind in fundamental skills, requiring close personal tutoring for her to catch up and finally thrive.
asserted
her → insist → tutoring
And the experience left Hannah-Jones doubting the wisdom of the convictions she held to so dear for nearly a decade — and foisted upon her daughter to fight against racial inequality.
asserted
she → leave → inequality
“I wanted my child to see it my way, to see the struggles she was having as part of a lineage and a mandate,” she wrote.
asserted
she → want → lineage
“To understand the tremendous privilege that I believed inoculated her against the worst consequences of the dysfunction and at times educational malpractice that she and her classmates experienced.”
asserted
she → understand → that
“But now I felt overcome with regret.
asserted
I → overcome → regret
Najya deserved better.
asserted
Najya → deserve → better
They all did.
asserted
They → do → ?
This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her, to give her what she needed to thrive.
asserted
she → look → what
…and 6 more, not listed.
The Aporia
