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# Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Biggest Blind Spot
- URL: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/nikole-hannah-jones-biggest-blind-spot/
- Published: 2026-09-28T18:00:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-28T19:50:58.000Z
- Description: She and her husband exercised school choice. Other families should have that right.
- Author: Derrell Bradford
- Tags: Education, Integration, Charter Schools

As anyone who follows the public education conversation surely knows by now, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones recently released the bookend chapter to a story she started in 2016 with the publishing of her seminal essay, “[Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/magazine/choosing-a-school-for-my-daughter-in-a-segregated-city.html?ref=vitalcitynyc.org).” Titled “[In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html?ref=vitalcitynyc.org),” the new piece has incited a passionate debate about the responsibility parents have for their children’s education, and how those decisions — and the constraints of urban public education systems across America — shape student outcomes and life chances.

Hannah-Jones is a talented writer, and whether by research, instinct or experience, she identifies many issues that New York City public schools, and public schools in general, face as they go about the work of educating the next generation of Americans. Namely, schools that mostly serve poor, Black and brown students are often of dramatically different quality than those that serve middle-class, primarily white students. But she elides the substance of this immensely complicated issue — ignoring well-known education policy levers such as addressing teacher quality and assignment, the role of testing and how reading is taught — and instead lays the blame consistently at the feet of “school choice” and, more notably, “us,” who, by her telling, forced her to make a bet on P.S. 307, an overwhelmingly Black school with a host of deep problems that Hannah-Jones thought she could solve — and indeed had an obligation to help solve — by enrolling her daughter and pushing for improvement as only someone in her position could. The initial logic went like this: If someone with her influence and power opted in to an oft-neglected, disempowered school, perhaps she could help turn it around — setting an example for others. The sequel essay admits that, in actuality, this hypothesis was deeply mistaken.

It is here that, as she foists her utopian view on other families and society as a whole, her argument breaks down. While Hannah-Jones expertly describes the challenges many families face, she consistently reaches conclusions that ignore the on-the-ground realities of school integration, the role alternative education sectors play in the nation’s schooling tapestry, and most of all the environment we all have a responsibility to foster, and the trust we should extend, so families can choose the best schools for their children, and their values, with confidence. 

Hannah-Jones’ decision-making in sending her child to a troubled school might confuse some, and rightly so, as in pursuit of an integrated school for her child she, instead, chose a segregated one. In doing so, she casts herself as the current heroine in a long line of activists who have “felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on collective good and not just our individual advantage.” Here she also describes her primary conflict, between those good people who want integration and favor collectivism, and the antagonists who are ruthless individualists, out only for their own kids. 

> While Hannah-Jones puts scare quotes around “school choice” throughout her essay, it is her own very intentional choice that provides the ultimate lesson, insight and hope for families that value their children’s aspirations over their address.

However, while the integration arguments of the Brownera are salient, and the pioneers of that time remain historic figures for their courage and sacrifice, we no longer live in that era. And, notably, there is a difference between the forced and segregated residential assignment of a half-century ago and the distortions in school finance it catalyzed, and the landscape today in a choice-rich environment like New York City. Indeed, one could argue that families of the integration era, having largely won the battle for “resources” (P.S. 307 spends [more than $50,000 annually](https://www.districtfacts.com/ny/school/ps-307-daniel-hale-williams/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) per student, which is more than double the 2024-2025 national average, cited by the [NEA](https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank/teacher?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) as $17,873), would want to enable an environment that allows all families to make the best choices for their own children. Integration is a laudable policy goal, but it is not the top goal of every minority family; many if not most care first and foremost about school quality. Yet Hannah-Jones labels families pious or heretical based on how they respond to her preferred policy vision. This is unfair to them, ignoring that families prioritize different things, and that education decisions are, ultimately, about trade-offs, as she herself experienced in her youth attending a largely white school in Iowa that she has described as [“academically stimulating and world-expanding.”](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/magazine/choosing-a-school-for-my-daughter-in-a-segregated-city.html?ref=vitalcitynyc.org)

Perhaps more telling is the fact that the schools and schooling Hannah-Jones seeks — well-run schools with challenging academics that serve kids who look like her daughter — already exist, but her own policy preferences hide them from her gaze and deny them from her daughter. There is a strong convention of “independent” schooling in the Black educational tradition, which may have grown out of a history where it was illegal to teach Black slaves to read, but today dots the landscape to show what is possible for those seeking an environment where schooling excellence and the Black experience are held equal. The all-girls [St. Mary’s Academy](https://smaneworleans.com/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) in New Orleans, one of the nation’s oldest Black Catholic schools, which gained visibility in 2023 when two of its students developed a trigonometric proof for the Pythagorean theorem, is one such example. As is the [Piney Woods School](https://www.pineywoods.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), a historic boarding school for Black students founded in 1909 in Mississippi. Closer to home, [the Link Community School](https://linkschool.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) in Newark, founded by the Sisters of St. Dominic in the wake of the city’s riots, educated Black students there for 45 years before converting to a charter school. Two of its principals during that time went on to launch two of the most successful charter schools serving minority students in the nation in Newark’s [North Star Academy](https://northstar.uncommonschools.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), named for Frederick Douglass’ antislavery newspaper, and the widely respected [Denver School of Science and Technology](https://www.dsstpublicschools.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) in Colorado.

The charter example is perhaps most pertinent in the New York City context, which is why its omission from Hannah-Jones’ decision-making matrix is so noteworthy. New York City’s charter sector is among the nation’s most studied and highly regarded, largely because the bar to entry set by the State is a high one and because, in the Bloomberg years, the City went out of its way to create a hospitable climate for such schools. It [serves](https://nyccharterschools.org/facts-about-charter-schools/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) approximately 152,000 students, 16% of the city’s public school students, with 88.9% of them being Black or Hispanic. And 70% of its teachers are educators of color. [Success Academy](https://www.successacademies.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), [Achievement First](https://www.achievementfirst.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), [Uncommon Schools](https://nyc.uncommonschools.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) and [KIPP](https://kippnyc.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), alongside many single-site schools like Bushwick’s [Math, Engineering, and Science Academy](https://www.mesacharter.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) (MESA), are among the region’s best schools of any type. There are four [charter elementary schools](https://www.greatschools.org/best-schools/new-york/brooklyn/?st%5B%5D=charter&view=list&ref=vitalcitynyc.org) with ratings of 9/10 or 10/10 on the oft-used site, GreatSchools, within minutes of P.S. 307, the school Hannah-Jones chose for her daughter. There are even diverse-by-design schools, such as the well-known [Brooklyn Prospect](https://www.brooklynprospect.org/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), which appear aligned to her values. Apparently, as they exist under the ideologically unacceptable umbrella of “school choice,” she and her husband did not even entertain them for their daughter. This despite the fact that the sector, like P.S. 307, is replete with low-income kids of color — but, unlike P.S. 307, posts strong results.

While an esteemed author ignores or derides the city’s charter schools (and other flavors of school choice), New York’s Black families are taking their own initiative. The number of Black students in the city’s charters has increased from [53,000 to almost 65,000](https://cityjournal.substack.com/p/the-unmentioned-villain-in-nikole) over the last decade. Clearly, some of what Hannah-Jones desires must be present in the sector. And clearly the families Hannah-Jones felt obliged to make her own choice on behalf of have made, and continue to make, a different one despite her advocacy. Are they all being suckered, or ruthless opportunists, or might they see something she doesn’t?

While Hannah-Jones puts scare quotes around “school choice” throughout her essay, it is her own very intentional choice that provides the ultimate lesson, insight and hope for families that value their children’s aspirations over their address. Functioning markets require supply, demand and information. A common criticism of school choice as it currently operates is that if it is to work well, it requires much better information, and sophisticated families as choosers. Put differently, opponents do not believe that, in the main, low-income families of color have the time, energy and inclination to find the best schools for their children — which is why they’d rather leave the job to education bureaucrats, demanding equity in neighborhood schools that families are sent to by default. Like in Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” the greater good is thus served.

If this is true, what should we make of Hannah-Jones’ own decision? She is the graduate of a prestigious college (Notre Dame), a well-known and respected writer, a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and a Pulitzer Prize winner who often writes about education and public schooling. One would be hard-pressed to find a more sophisticated education chooser with access to better information than she. Despite this, she chose what many deem to be an objectively and demonstrably underperforming school for her daughter, because it matched her values and worldview, and — as she now readily admits — her daughter paid the price. 

What is important about this discourse, however, is not the excoriation she has received for making the choice to send her daughter to P.S. 307\. It is that no one has questioned Hannah-Jones’ right to make this choice despite its consequences. Supporters of school choice have long argued that the same grace extended to Hannah-Jones as she made what most describe as an objectively bad decision should be extended to all families, regardless of their station. Perhaps it is time to do so.

Hannah-Jones has certainly started a passionate conversation about education and whether families should act in the best interests of their own children, but I fear the conversation’s contours. In championing a system for all that upholds her point of view and the primacy of integration, she swaps the objective pursuit of excellence for a subjective chase of values-aligned perfection. This is not the state education system’s responsibility (even as it struggles to teach kids to read). It is, ironically, where school choice becomes essential, giving the responsibility and power to individual families to meet their needs. Those of us who love words know heroes, real or prospective, go on journeys that change them and their worldviews as a result. If there is a next chapter in the story of Hannah-Jones, her daughter and her education, a closing that affirmed a family’s right to choose the school that works for them would be the strongest of possible endings.