蜜桃影视

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for 蜜桃影视 Newsletter

If you haven鈥檛 already, I suggest you read Nikole Hannah-Jones鈥� long looking back on her school choice decisions in NYC. Hannah-Jones chose a school for her daughter in significant part because of the school鈥檚 racial demographics. Years later, both she and her daughter are wrestling with the consequences of that decision.

The essay is long, complicated and blowing up the education world. Rather than relitigate the whole thing, I wanted to highlight a few reactions that stood out to me.

First, in , I point out that Hannah-Jones and her husband repeatedly dismissed the warning signs that their daughter wasn鈥檛 doing well in math. While she was getting good grades and even said math was her favorite subject, she wasn鈥檛 scoring proficient on the state test. Hannah-Jones dismissed this as her being 鈥渂ad at tests鈥� but eventually discovered that her daughter hadn鈥檛 mastered long division and fractions.

Much of Hannah-Jones鈥� story is not replicable or even relevant to ordinary parents, but this one is. As notes, 鈥渕ath anxiety鈥� is often a symptom of weak math skills. Parents ignore this at their own child鈥檚 peril.

An incredibly depressing article. A few points:
馃敻If your kid can鈥檛 add fractions, they are not ready for algebra, even if the school is giving them A鈥檚. It's an easy check. Make sure they can add, subtract, multiply, divide fractions.
馃敻Lots of misinformed math education鈥�

— Anna Stokke (@rastokke)

When kids have math gaps, they might be ok in the short run if they鈥檙e still getting good grades. But math gaps have a way of showing up later in different, consequential ways. For example, Hannah-Jones laments that her daughter, like many Black students in NYC, didn鈥檛 have sufficient academic skills to get into one of the city鈥檚 selective high schools.

That same theme runs through several of the reactions. Matthew Zeitlin connects Hannah-Jones鈥� story to the controversy over math preparation at the University of California.

One thing clear from the Hannah-Jones essay and from what we鈥檙e seeing at the UCs is that it鈥檚 very tempting to make grades meaningless as a way of reducing the tension and pressure from actually tracking achievement

— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin)

I would Rutgers to that list.

Looking more broadly, critiques Hannah-Jones for combining hazy arguments about structural inequities while over the very real resources her daughter鈥檚 school had access to:

Likewise, she鈥檚 quick to point out the structural and sometimes race-based inequalities in school finance, but fails to mention that, according to , the school she sent her daughter to was spending $52K per student. Even accounting for New York鈥檚 high cost of living, most schools in this country would be happy to be on the receiving end of that kind of inequality. When paired with the kind of results Hannah-Jones describes, it鈥檚 an obscene embarrassment to the cause of public schools. And I worry that without more nuance (far too many schools serving poor Black kids are performing poorly despite having resources), people like Hannah-Jones make it harder to secure equitable funding for poor kids because they fuel easy cynicism. This school has an adult to kid ratio of fewer than 10-to-1, and Hannah-Jones is complaining that the cafeteria was unstaffed and out of control? C鈥檓on.

And who is responsible here? As I noted in , despite these resources the school had a chronic absenteeism rate of 57%, and just 23% of its students were proficient in math. To put it mildly, those are awful results.

John Arnold notes that Hannah-Jones pulls her punches on this account. In her version of the story, there鈥檚 no bad guy, no one to blame but society itself. But surely someone is responsible for poor reading and math outcomes in NYC public schools?

Hannah-Jones includes some version of the word "unequal" 15 times, "segregation" 25 times, and "resources" 4 times, but not one instance of "accountability," "union," or "standards."

— John Arnold (@johnarnold)

One thing that鈥檚 left unsaid in her piece is that Hannah-Jones鈥� family had an unusual amount of choice. They chose among public schools, selected a STEM magnet and considered different middle and high schools.

In this context, as Marc Porter Magee points out, it was odd that Hannah-Jones never mentioned the city鈥檚 286 public charter schools.

While some are calling it misleading, I thought it was a bold literary decision by Nikole Hannah-Jones to imagine in her first-person essay a NYC without its 286 charter schools. It really heightens the tension.

— Marc Porter Magee 馃帗 (@marcportermagee)

One of the assumptions underlying Hannah-Jones鈥� choice was that her child would be fine. After all, she had well-educated parents who would step in if they spotted trouble. And Hannah-Jones did. She was active in the school community, donated to the PTA and provided her daughter with outside tutoring support. But notes that this story is a reminder that good family background can mitigate bad schooling somewhat, but it can’t fully substitute for good instruction.

Another take-away from 's piece…if you, consciously or unconsciously, think "the smart kids will always be okay," you're wrong. The smart kids need attention and good instruction too.

— Daniel Willingham (@DTWillingham)

In fact, this gets to a harder question about how to improve schools. Hannah-Jones鈥� original theory of action depended on parents like her choosing struggling, high-poverty schools rather than fleeing them. After all, she was a reporter for the freaking New York Times! If anything bad happened, surely she could step in and use her voice to advocate for improvements.

鈥淎 NYT reporter in a high-poverty school f-ing changes the school 鈥� I can go to that school and say there is a problem and it gets fixed immediately鈥� – Nikole Hannah-Jones

— Marc Porter Magee 馃帗 (@marcportermagee)

Unfortunately, it didn鈥檛 play out like that. And there is something admirable about Hannah-Jones鈥� vulnerability in sharing her story. She believed deeply in integration and in the importance of families like hers committing themselves to public schools serving disadvantaged children. She didn鈥檛 merely tell other people to make a sacrifice she was unwilling to make herself.

Her latest essay now confronts the costs of that choice, especially for her daughter. I don鈥檛 think she fully grapples with that reality, but I still have hope it will prompt a broader conversation about what we should ask of parents. As Derrell Bradford puts it, 鈥淚t鈥檚 a mistake to design public policy that requires someone to act against the best interests of their own children.鈥�

It鈥檚 a mistake to design public policy that requires someone to act against the best interests of their own children.

— Derrell Bradford (@Dyrnwyn)

For years, Hannah-Jones has been part of a conversation about school choice that attaches moral significance to where parents send their children. But parents shouldn鈥檛 have to carry that burden. Hannah-Jones deserves some credit for living according to her convictions, but her story also shows why we should be careful about turning those convictions into obligations for anyone else.

This essay originally appeared on Chad Aldeman’s .

Did you use this article in your work?

We鈥檇 love to hear how 蜜桃影视鈥檚 reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers.