Nikole Hannah-Jones has acknowledged deep regret over sending her daughter to struggling Brooklyn public schools rather than using her family’s resources for stronger options.
In a September 20, 2026, New York Times Magazine essay titled “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?,” the 1619 Project creator revisited a choice she first publicized in 2016. Then, she and her husband enrolled their daughter Najya in P.S. 307, a high-poverty school near public housing with low proficiency rates, followed by the Urban Assembly Unison School. They did so despite having the money, connections, and status to pursue better-performing public schools or private ones—the path many of their middle-class neighbors took.
Hannah-Jones framed the decision as solidarity: middle-class families should not abandon schools serving mostly poor Black and Latino children. She hoped their presence and resources would improve conditions for everyone. Her husband initially favored looking at parochial, selective public, or private schools, worried it would hurt their daughter. They proceeded anyway.
Years later, the results were mixed at best. Hannah-Jones described chaotic lunchrooms with little supervision, fights, absentee administrators, teachers who did not consistently grade work, and thin academic rigor. Najya earned good grades and believed she was strong in math. When she later entered a more demanding high school of her own choosing, tutors found foundational gaps dating to elementary school. She initially failed the state algebra exam.
Najya, now 16, confronted her mother. “So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” she asked. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school? Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted.”
Hannah-Jones wrote that she felt she had failed both her values and her child. “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.” She told her daughter she felt she had been cheated.
The family eventually allowed Najya to apply to competitive high schools—the kind Hannah-Jones has long criticized as reinforcing inequality. With tutoring, she caught up. Hannah-Jones has said the larger problem of unequal schools remains and that families without her options still lack real choice. Critics have argued the episode illustrates the cost of treating a child’s education as an ideological project. Her husband has said they do not fully regret the original decision.
The essay does not claim every child in those schools received a poor education, nor does it retract her broader reporting on segregation. It does record a parent concluding that principle and parental duty pulled in opposite directions—and that her daughter paid a price.
SOURCES:
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? – The New York Times
Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City – The New York Times
NYT writer Nikole Hannah-Jones sent daughter to troubled schools as a ‘sacrifice’ — and it backfired
NYT School Expert: Did I Betray My Own Child?
Nikole Hannah-Jones May Have Just Written a Eulogy for Woke Idealism – Newsweek
Nikole Hannah-Jones says she regrets daughter’s Brooklyn school choice | Fox News
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