{"id":352008,"date":"2026-09-20T23:46:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T23:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/352008\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T23:46:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T23:46:57","slug":"nyt-writer-nikole-hannah-jones-sent-daughter-to-troubled-schools-as-a-sacrifice-and-it-backfired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/352008\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT writer Nikole Hannah-Jones sent daughter to troubled schools as a ‘sacrifice’ \u2014 and it backfired"},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer behind the New York Times\u2019 controversial 1619 Project <\/a>deliberately sent her daughter to poor Big Apple schools as a \u201csacrifice\u201d to try to boost the education system \u2014 and no one is angrier than the kid.<\/p>\n

The teen is now \u201cboiling\u201d mad \u2014 badly behind her peers after finally being allowed to enroll in a more rigorous high school, her mother revealed in a bombshell bizarre essay.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones, 50, enrolled her only child in two struggling Brooklyn public schools beginning in 2015 \u2014 as part of a battle to change what she characterized as systemic racism, despite having the \u201cconnections and time and status\u201d to get the girl into the city\u2019s best schools, she wrote in the Times Magazine<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones\u2019 2016 article about sending her daughter to struggling public schools made her a household name. Getty Images for ESSENCE<\/p>\n

That \u201cstatus\u201d included top-notch education of her own and financial security \u2014 she and her husband bought a $1.5 million Bed-Stuy brownstone in 2018. <\/p>\n

But she said she still decided to offer up her daughter\u2019s education for the cause of bettering the experience of black students in city schools.<\/p>\n

By her own account, Hannah-Jones\u2019 daughter Najya knows she was cheated by her parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?\u201d the girl yelled in one fight, according to the essay. \u201cBecause other kids are disadvantaged, you didn\u2019t want to put me in a great school?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hannah-Jones wrote of her decision, \u201cWe thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones became widely known for the hotly debated 1619 project, which rewrote American history. Getty Images for ESSENCE<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage,\u201d the mom said.<\/p>\n

But after years of her daughter at the schools \u2014 PS 307 and Urban Assembly Unison, a specialty middle school \u2014 Hannah-Jones discovered her sharp-witted child lacked the basic skills<\/a> to keep up in high school.<\/p>\n

And the girl was furious her own family put the community\u2019s needs before hers.<\/p>\n

Public School 307 in Brooklyn, where Hannah-Jones first sent her daughter to school despite knowing its struggles. Google Maps<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me,\u201d Hannah-Jones\u2019 now-16-year-old daughter, Najya, said during a confrontation over the summer. <\/p>\n

\u201cI never really got the education I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Hannah-Jones had to agree, telling her daughter, \u201cI feel like you got cheated\u201d and admitting in the essay she may have \u201cfailed\u201d her daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cNajya was asking what I\u2019d accomplished by not choosing the \u2018best\u2019 school for her,\u201d Hannah-Jones wrote. \u201cThe honest answer is, I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hannah-Jones herself benefited from parents who put her education first. Beginning in the second grade, she was enrolled in a busing program that sent her to a less segregated school near her Iowa hometown and then went on to the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

At PS 307 near DUMBO in Brooklyn, where her daughter attended, there was a 56% black student body, and just 19% of students met state standards on English \u2014 well below the citywide average of about 40% of students \u2014 in 2016, according to Department of Education figures. Nearly 40% of the students had special needs.<\/p>\n

Urban Assembly Unison, between Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, has a 69% black student body, and 40% of its students met state standards in 2024 \u2014 compared to 55% for middle schools city-wide. About one-third of the students had special needs.<\/p>\n

Hannah-Jones\u2019 extensive essay was a follow-up to one she wrote in 2016<\/a> in which she first explained 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.<\/p>\n

That essay went viral and sparked national dialogues about race in American schools, while also helping establish Hannah-Jones\u2019 career as a leading name in black studies before she helped create the 1619 Project \u2014 a hotly debated and massively successful series of books, podcasts, and other media which argue slavery is the most important part<\/a> of all American history.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, Najya found herself in schools so overwhelmed that they\u2019d stopped assigning homework or providing basic supervision during the school day.<\/p>\n

In one shocking revelation involving Najya in 4th grade, Hannah-Jones discovered the girl\u2019s teachers hadn\u2019t been grading her schoolwork \u2014 and that her supposed proficiency was complete nonsense.<\/p>\n

K351 The Urban Assembly Unison School. Google Maps<\/p>\n

\u201cNajya believed herself to be good at math \u2014 it was her favorite subject. But now I understood she thought she was correctly solving all her problems because her teacher was not checking her work,\u201d the distraught mother wrote. \u201cNajya\u2019s writing assignments were rife with uncorrected punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Despite that fury, Hannah-Jones kept her daughter enrolled in local public schools once she reached the sixth grade. 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.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones attends the world premiere of the HBO original documentary series \u201cJay Z in 8\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Sunday, September 13, 2026. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n

Najya\u2019s complaints came to a head as she neared high school and found her school\u2019s struggling scores online \u2014 sparking an explosive fight between mother and daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?\u201d Najya said, before her mother explained her reasoning. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before Najya insisted she be allowed to choose her own high school, and Hannah-Jones finally agreed \u2014 only for Najya to get there and her teachers to discover she was woefully behind in fundamental skills, requiring close personal tutoring for her to catch up and finally thrive.<\/p>\n

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The experience left Hannah-Jones doubting the wisdom of the convictions she held to so dear for nearly a decade \u2014 and foisted upon her daughter to fight against racial inequality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted my child to see it my way, to see the struggles she was having as part of a lineage and a mandate,\u201d she wrote. \u201cTo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones speaks onstage during the 2026 ESSENCE Festival of Culture presented by Coca-Cola at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, Friday, July 3, 2026. Getty Images for ESSENCE<\/p>\n

\u201cBut now I felt overcome with regret. Najya deserved better. 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,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n

Reponses to the extensive essay were varied \u2014 with some accusing Hannah-Jones of foolishly imperiling her own daughter\u2019s future in a stunning act of virtue-signaling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most thoughtful thing I can say in response to this very predictable follow-up essay is that when I discussed your first article with my own black father who grew up under segregation and fought tooth and nail for an education.\u201d Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to a struggling middle school even after she barely made it through elementary. Getty Images for ESSENCE<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was gobsmacked.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others praised Hannah-Jones for extending her morals to her family in an attempt to change the world through them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing contemptible about living by your principles and trying to uplift your community,\u201d writer Helen Andrews said on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer failure was not moral but analytical. She thought the schools were failing from not enough money, parental involvement, or administrative attention \u2014 all of which she was in a position to provide,\u201d Andrew added. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf her diagnosis had been correct, her decision would have been laudable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The writer behind the New York Times\u2019 controversial 1619 Project deliberately sent her daughter to poor Big Apple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,288,67,57,9,24,63,5271,2585,58],"class_list":["post-352008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-business","tag-education","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-schools","tag-students","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}