Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist behind the 1619 Project, has written publicly about her decision to send her daughter to a low-income, majority-Black public school starting in pre-K, and about the regret she says followed years later.
“When [my daughter] Najya was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid — one that is low-income and mostly [b]lack,” Hannah-Jones writes. “We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and [b]lack school, we could help improve it for all the children there.”
According to her account, problems became apparent well before her daughter reached upper elementary school. “Toward the end of first grade, Najya started sometimes saying she didn’t like her school and complaining how chaotic it was at lunch,” Hannah-Jones writes. She says she visited during lunch and found no adult supervision, with “kids running wild, chasing, hitting, and pushing each other while the teacher’s aides and cafeteria workers stood by looking bored.”
She describes fourth grade as “the worst year,” writing that she discovered her daughter was not performing on grade level in any academic subject and had not been assessed as a proficient reader at the start of that school year. On math, which her daughter believed was her strongest subject, Hannah-Jones writes: “I started checking Najya’s work and discovered most of her answers were wrong.” She says her daughter had believed she was solving problems correctly because her teacher was not checking her work.
The account continues into seventh grade, when Hannah-Jones says her daughter looked up the school’s test scores online and asked her directly: “Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?”
Hannah-Jones writes that she was “overcome with regret” upon reflection. “Najya deserved better,” she writes. “They all did. But she was mine. This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her, to give her what she needed to thrive. And I had not chosen her.”
The essay has drawn attention because Hannah-Jones has been a prominent voice in debates over school choice and education policy, and her account describes firsthand the kind of academic and safety shortfalls that critics of assigned public schooling often cite as reasons families seek alternatives.
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