Nikole Hannah Jones and the Personal Politics of School Choice

Nikole Hannah Jones, a New York Times columnist, and main author of the award winning 1619 Project,  recently set the internet ablaze as she chronicled the agonizing decisions she and her husband made to provide her daughter with the best education possible in a deeply segregated New York City school system.

Jones deftly describes New York’s public and private educational universe that consistently clumps Black and Brown students of less means, in schools that are chronically underresourced. New Yorkers with better means, who are most often white or Asian, either live in neighborhoods with better traditional public schools, send their children to private schools, or spend money on tutoring and enrichment activities to position their children to enter the city’s highly  selective and restrictive public schools.

 Needless to say, Black and brown children are woefully underrepresented in these schools even though they make up a substantial portion of New York City’s school age population.

Jones knows these circumstances all too well. She has written insightfully on the lingering inequality and discrimination of school systems across the country. She even penned an incisive essay on St. Louis education in 2014 to help contextualize the tragedy of Michael Brown’s death.

Around that time, she also published a first person essay on her family’s decision to send her daughter Najya to a school near her Brooklyn home that Jones describes as “segregated” and “high-poverty.” Jones definitely could have sent Najya to better resourced schools as most other parents with her level of resources most often do. But in Jones’s past writing, she has critiqued these decisions, arguing that they sustain systemic inequality, leaving poorer Black and Brown students stuck in struggling schools.

Realizing that personal decisions have larger political ramifications, Jones hoped that sending her child to a lower performing school could inspire other parents like her to do the same. She could also show these parents that choosing their politics and what was best for their children academically  were not mutually exclusive.

I won’t discuss the details of her experiences. Jones, a Pulitzer prize winning author, is more than capable. I will say that her decision gave her a new, intimate sense of what her reporting had proven all along.

Jones’s daughter encountered teachers who were overwhelmed by so many students who were inadequately prepared and/or had learning disabilities. Najya, who was a bright and capable student, often felt neglected as so much attention was devoted to her classmates with greater academic deficits and behavioral problems. She often had homework that went unchecked and took school assessments that were never evaluated.

When Jones and her husband reached out to the school for answers, their emails and phone calls often went unanswered.

In middle school, Najya fortunately had a more competent and responsive principal. However, the school was beset by similar problems such as no homework given, class disruptions, and not enough time devoted to more capable students. This, along with Najya’s elementary school experience left her unprepared as she began to consider high school options. Things came to a head when Najya accused Jones of choosing her politics over her own daughter.

Jones was subsequently forced to reconsider the principled stances she took in the past and wrestle with the effect it had on Najya. Jones also wondered if her daughter was given sufficient agency to make her own schooling decisions even though she often expressed, “I don’t want to go to this school.”

This is the premise of Jones’s soul-searching journey. She leaves the article and us with no easy answers.

Her article has received a multitude of responses and is the subject of multiple think pieces. Quite predictably, conservatives, still fuming from the 1619 Project, have portrayed Jones’s story as yet another example of “woke gone wrong.” They bypass the core of her article which focuses on systematic inequality and instead blame Black communities and their values (or lack thereof) for the educational crisis they face.

However, even Black folks with similar politics have questioned Jones’s decision. Many have claimed that she subjected her child to educational malpractice for her lofty ideals. Simply put, if she had the means to explore other options, she should have used them.

I think that Jones should be commended. Many of us have these struggles in private and lack the courage and humility to question very personal and political decisions out loud. Jones also deserves grace when considering the educational choices she made. She followed where her heart and reporting led her. She surely would have been roundly criticized for advocating one thing for Black parents in print while choosing another path for herself in private.

Ultimately, she conveys both the enormity and seeming impossibility of circumstances not of her making. The problem is not the choice that she made, but that she had to make one at all.

I am certain that many of Jones’s colleagues at the New York Times do not face the conundrum of sending their children to a top flight academic school or one where their culture is affirmed. Even if they are liberal and aware of the public ramifications of such decisions, many choose the path of least resistance, and thus sustain the current system.

What I often found interesting in the responses to Jones’s article is that the underperforming schools where her daughter attended were seen as representative of all Black schools. Despite long histories of discrimination and a lack of resources, there are many examples of Black educators and communities who have heroically maintained quality schools that have high expectations, innovative curricula, expert teachers, and strong leadership. There is also a tradition of Black communities, who, when faced with similar challenges as Jones, created their own schools.

Still, these examples do not negate Jones’s real experiences, and more importantly, countless other families like hers. They exist within a larger system of deliberate failure that imperils far too many Black children.

At the same time, we would be mistaken if we concluded that schools with more resources are by default better, particularly when considering the education of Black children. Najya saw this first hand when attending a white high school where she constantly encountered racist microaggressions. These experiences helped her better appreciate the cultural grounding she received at the underresourced schools she attended earlier.

And many Black people who have attended or sent their children to predominantly white institutions have testimonials of unresponsive leadership, aloof teachers, and coursework that fails to reflect the diversity of the school’s student body. Resources and also the reputation of whiteness often mask these deficiencies. As Jones aptly states, regardless of the school a Black family chooses, “there is nearly always going to be a struggle. It’s just a matter of which one.”

We can recognize both the enormity of the problem highlighted by Jones and be mobilized by it. It is at once intimidating and inspiring. Along with the broader discussions of history, structural inequality, and systemic racism, Jones’s article is a family story. And while a storybook ending does not seem imminent for Black education, Jones hints that Nyaja has gained an appreciation (along with her frustration) of the choices her mother made. We see in Najya a budding consciousness. And hopefully, we will see the sister continuing to make sense of it all, and like her mother, do something about it. If so, this would be the most valuable lesson to be learned.