Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the controversial “1619 Project,” enrolled her daughter in an underperforming public school 10 years ago — a decision rooted in ideology rather than what was best for her child.
The experiment failed spectacularly.
Hannah-Jones and her husband Faraji chose to send their daughter Najya to a failing school despite their success and resources. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, where she works as a staff writer, Hannah-Jones explained she “was determined not to do what I’d seen so many others do when their values about integration collided with the reality of where to send their own children to school.”
Najya became frustrated almost immediately. Classroom instruction was lacking or nonexistent. The cafeteria was chaotic. Teachers ignored students in the middle while poorly behaved kids consumed all the attention. Assignments received grades but weren’t actually graded.
By the time Najya convinced her parents to let her transfer out for high school, she was severely behind academically and required tutoring to catch up to her new peers.
Hannah-Jones later lamented the failure, writing that their “experience at P.S. 307 exposed the fallacy that caring families are more important than competent teachers.”
But she’s wrong again.
While one set of caring parents can’t change an entire school, parental involvement is a key factor differentiating high- and low-performing schools. To acknowledge this, Hannah-Jones would have to adjust her staunch opposition to school choice — something she views as rooted in racism and classism.
The data tells a different story. Spending doesn’t correlate with academic success. Mississippi, a highly impoverished state, went from 49th in the nation to top 10 for student success — not by boosting spending, but by changing its approach. The state grades schools, sends specialists to help underperforming ones, and holds students back when necessary. Mississippi’s relatively weak teachers union also helps.
School choice works not because it consolidates wealthy families in certain schools, but because desirable schools feature the most involved parents. At classical charter schools, parents volunteer for field trips and recess help. They stay on top of their kids’ academic progress.
Contrast that with what volunteers discovered at a 2014 Washington D.C. school choice conference. Parents assumed their kids were successful because they advanced to the next grade each year. The truth: kids weren’t passing but being passed along. Many were behind academically. Some were wholly illiterate. Their parents had no idea.
“What they could not do was make other parents care as much as they did. And when the parents don’t care, when school is just a place you send your kids to get them out of the house or because you need childcare to go to work, you end up with dysfunction.”
When parents know what’s going on — as they do at charters, private schools, and highly desirable traditional public schools — there are too many voices for administrators to ignore. Those parents also possess intimate knowledge about their children that allows them to actually parent, discipline misbehavior, and help with homework.
Yet a certain faction remains obsessed with the idea that education is too important to be left to parents. Public schools are romanticized as magical classless places where every child can become a winner. Homeschooling is frowned upon. Charters are misunderstood as private schools rather than public ones.
For Hannah-Jones and people like her, the belief in public schools as places that can help all students achieve their full potential borders on religious. The failing ones just need more money and more diversity. Any competing institutions must be abolished.
A failing school can never be spent into a successful one. A school where a majority of students have disinterested parents will reflect that disinterest. There are solutions that don’t require involved parents, but they would require society to be less squeamish.
Take the case of Mrs. Burt, an extraordinary junior high science teacher who pushed underachieving students toward success. Her methods would get her fired in 2026. Her class was chaotic — nothing but boys, many of them rambunctious troublemakers with little interest in education. Mrs. Burt wasn’t afraid to throw things when annoyed: her keys, ice from her cup, the blackboard eraser.
She hit her breaking point and made a drastic decision. Everyone got assigned seats. The two rows on her left were the “smart students” who could ask questions. The other three rows were the “dumb students” — they could nap or draw as long as they stayed quiet and didn’t ask questions.
By semester’s end, all five rows were the smart rows. Boys who put forth zero effort in other classes showed up prepared, having done the reading and homework. Being called dumb in a class full of boys didn’t carry the same sting — trash talk is how they bond.
Mrs. Burt cannot exist today. We’re too sensitive, even as we need her more than ever.
There will always be disparate outcomes. And while it’s easy to blame societal forces, the disparity often starts at home — something Hannah-Jones should have realized when she backed down from her ideological commitment and focused on her commitments as a parent.
She took responsibility for her daughter instead of ignoring her to take responsibility for the community. If only everyone were so selfish about their kids’ educations, we’d see the sort of transformation nationwide that Hannah-Jones saw in the high school Najya chose.
