Apparently everybody anywhere in the education orbit is whipping through the Nikole Hanah-Jones piece in which she recounts the story of sacrificing her daughter's schooling on a matter of principle, and coming to regret it. She could have gotten her child into an upscale New York school. Instead, "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 Black." Leading to the moment when her teen asks her if she knew the schools were "that bad" when she enrolled the daughter.
The discourse around the piece has been loud, and ordinarily I don't use my perch as a well-regarded C-level blogger to add to what more widely-read writers have to say. But I've been struck by several things that haven't turned up in much of the reactions, so here are my thoughts, in no particular order.
1) NHJ is describing a challenging decision that has been made a gazillion times by less famous people who didn't get as much attention. It has been an issue as long as we have had schools-- if you have the privileged ability to get your child away from a less-than-optimal school situation, do you use it, or are you betraying the people who don't have your privilege? But while I have definite ideas about the policy issues involved in school choice, I would never expect a parent to do anything other than what they think is best for their child.
2) I get tired of discussion centered on the New York City school system, a system that by virtue of its size and complexity and politics (there are about 300,000 more students in the NYC school system than there are human beings in the state of Wyoming) is not an example of anything but itself. There isn't a single district in my entire state that can learn anything from NYC schools. Put another way, I see no more reason for my local district of 1,800 students to receive constant national attention than there is to pay that kind of attention to NYC's system.
3) Much of the discourse rightly centers on the problems of a system that is highly segregated and which provides the least resources to the non-wealthy and non-white. It would be lovely if NHJ's piece opened up a meaningful discussion about those issues but, predictably, it has not. Instead, everyone is saying what they always say, yelling "Aha!" and rushing to make their usual arguments. Some of these arguments are dumb-- family exit from a school is exactly what should happen because that would make schools like this one better, except that, of course, the threat of exit already exists for that school and yet it has not been spurred to greatness by market forces. Some of the arguments are broadly correct, but not particularly helpful-- yes, racism certainly fuels the segregation of students and resources in the city system. But I haven't seen a single reaction today that made me think "Well, that's a useful new tack" or even "Nice to see someone nuancing their position." Mostly (mostly) just a hundred variations of "I told you so and now I will tell you so again."
4) NHJ's story underscores the importance of engaged and caring teachers, supportive staff, and parents who are willing to engage and push the school. And it also shows the ways that school choice segregate students not only by class, but by ability. NHJ writes, "Because they serve students who have been educationally neglected long before they arrive at their doors, schools like Unison are often faced with no good choices."
5) And while everyone fires off simple-answer responses to the piece, one of the educators that NHJ talks to says
“There’s no model out there for holding all of these truths, these complex truths, all at once. We are working within the system that we know is not working, while trying to recreate and reimagine a new system, while working with young people who have all this potential, who’ve not been given the opportunities for that potential to thrive and be unleashed. And they understand all of it, and they understand none of it, all at once.”
And while many commenters have flattened NHJ's raw and honest examination of her position, if you actually read the piece (and you absolutely read the piece and maybe skip most of the pieces about the piece), at the very end you find this
Black children in New York’s schools, and this nation’s, are as segregated now as they were a decade ago, two decades ago, three. And in profound ways, we’ve actually moved backward, with a federal government that no longer gives even lip service to integration but instead is weaponized against it.
We desire to be let off the hook by these realities — that we tried and we failed; by the shamble of decades of halfhearted efforts; by how insoluble it is to achieve equality in a nation with our history. Instead of fortifying our determination to fight for integration, we have instead chosen to succumb to a collective apathy in the face of a system so devastatingly unequal that it puts at odds trying to be a good person with trying to be a good parent.
But for all of our justifications, including mine, an undeniable verity remains. As long as we continue to rescue our own children from the failing schools where we allow other people’s children to languish simply because those children have been born Black and poor in a nation of racism and riches, there is no absolution here. Not for me. Not for you. Not for any of us.
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