By Paul Vallas

September 27^th, 2026 

“Her obsession with the Black-White oppressed-oppressor narrative is so total she never looks outside White racism to consider why families representing all demographics flee traditional public schools.”

There is so much to unpack in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s New York Times piece about her decision to subject her daughter to a deliberately poor-quality education in an underperforming neighborhood school when she had real alternatives. Her claim that “my daughter’s sacrifice could not transform a system that those who hold the most power refuse to change” is an extreme form of selfish narcissism. That so many are celebrating the jeopardizing of her only child’s future as heroic is nothing short of disgusting. [1]

Of course, her and her daughter’s experience in what she described as a failing school was explained away as racism, and she faulted parents who rescue their children from failing schools for “allowing other people’s children to languish simply because those children have been born Black and poor in a nation of racism and riches.” For those parents who prioritize the needs of their children over all else, she claims there is no absolution.

You would think she would be radicalized against the teacher unions and the complacent, self-serving New York City education bureaucracy—which is run by people who agree with her politically—but apparently, it does not even occur to her. If there is one lesson she should have taken from this experience, it is that the White and Asian parents Hannah-Jones scorns simply do not want the prospects of their children blighted by scandalously incompetent schools. Neither do Black parents, by the way.

New York City’s public-school system has a $45 billion budget for the 2025–26 school year. The city reports per-student spending of $34,717. When debt service, transportation, food and other costs are included the aggregate per-student costs range from $42,000 to $50,000.  Despite these funding levels a report by the Success Academy Charter Schools network found that 906 New York City public and charter schools, half of all city schools and representing 43% of all public-school children, had fewer than half of their students pass state exams in math, reading, or both. [2][3]

P.S. 307, the public school that Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to, has reported per-student funding of $43,972 for FY2026. When including centrally allocated services—such as food, school safety, and transportation—the actual expenditure increases to roughly $52,000 to $58,000 per student. By comparison, P.S. 8, a wealthy elementary school less than a mile away that served as a foil in Nikole Hannah-Jones’ original 2016 essay, was allocated just $15,860 per pupil.[4]

If racism is a factor in education, it is a product of a teacher-union-dominated public-school system that leaves wealthy families with options—private schools, selective programs, or a move to the suburbs—while poor, overwhelmingly Black and Latino children are too often trapped in failing, under-enrolled district schools. These schools often lack rigorous academics, accountability, or meaningful oversight.

Local school leadership has little autonomy over the day-to-day operations. This includes selecting a school staffing model, determining job responsibilities, hiring and firing staff, selecting the learning model and curriculum, controlling the budget, setting the school calendar and schedule, and determining the length of the school day or year. Meanwhile, the district’s bloated, centralized bureaucracy enforces teacher contracts whose provisions present obstacles to improving schools.

By opposing public support for low-income families whose children attend private schools, by capping charter schools, and by degrading selective-enrollment schools, union-backed policies lock many of the city’s poorest families into the worst schools with no way out. It is segregation—maybe not by design, but certainly in consequence.  As Thomas Sowell once warned: “The most dangerous form of racism is not the kind that comes with a hood or a noose… It is the kind that comes with an eraser —erasing opportunities.”

The vociferous opposition by national teachers’ unions and their political allies to state participation in the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit is the clearest evidence yet that the education of children is not their priority. The unions are willing to deny funding for public-school families for such things as tutoring, enrichment, special education, and early-childhood-development programs in order to block support for low-income private-school families.

The American Federation for Children estimates that the EFTC’s 100 percent tax credit, capped at $1,700 annually, could generate up to $1.5 billion in scholarship funding for New York City’s K–12 students if just 30 percent of New York City taxpayers took the credit. Nearly 900,000 children would be eligible for annual scholarships across public, charter, and private schools, providing middle- and lower-income families significant resources to support their children’s education.

Private schools have demonstrated extraordinary success, including in neighborhoods suffering economic hardship. According to an analysis by Kathleen Porter-Magee, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, “If Catholic schools were a state, they would be the highest performing in the nation on all four NAEP tests.” The National Assessment of Educational Progress results cited in that analysis show Catholic-school students posting higher average reading and math scores than public-school students on the four tested grade-and-subject combinations. [5]

The majority of Black parents would leave their neighborhood schools if they had the means. The fact that more than 150,000 students are enrolled in New York City public charter schools is instructive. Nearly 90 percent of those students are Black or Hispanic, and roughly 82 percent are economically disadvantaged. Charter-school students, particularly Black and Hispanic students, have posted substantially higher proficiency rates than their district-school peers in citywide sector comparisons. [6]

Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)study tracked charter-school outcomes over 15 years covering over two million charter students in 29 states. Its conclusions are unequivocal: Most charter schools “produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population. Black and Hispanic students in charter schools advance more than their peers by large margins in both math and reading. [7]

Thomas Sowell, in “Charter Schools and Their Enemies,” focused on more than 100 New York City school comparisons in which charter-school and traditional public-school students shared the same building. According to figures reported from his analysis, just 14 percent of students in the traditional public schools were proficient in English and 11 percent were proficient in math. In the charter schools, 65 percent were proficient in English and 68 percent were proficient in math. [8]

Many are lauding Nikole Hannah-Jones for her honesty. My problem is she used her daughter—twice. First, by experimenting with her daughter’s life at school; then, by using her experience to write an article that presents her actions in a courageous light. She sacrificed her child’s education to her racial ideology, experienced the dismal result, inflicted perhaps permanent damage, and learned absolutely nothing from the experience.

Her obsession with the Black-White oppressed-oppressor narrative is so total she never looks outside White racism to consider why families representing all demographics flee traditional public schools. Meanwhile, she has not endorsed or spoken in favor of the federal education scholarship program which would help low-income family’s opportunities to send their children to private schools while historically strongly opposing choice programs like vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and charters.

The “equal protection” clause in the Constitution requires all children have the right to a free public education and are provided equal educational opportunity. It doesn’t mandate it be a a teacher union dominated government education. School choice is the civil-rights fight of our time, and low-income families are on the front lines. Teacher unions’ grip on public education has already inflicted lasting damage on generations of children. Every family deserves the right to ensure a better future by choosing the best school for its child regardless of school type, family income or zip code.

Sources

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html

[2] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/funding/funding-our-schools

[3] https://fb.watch/JPJIAvrklO/?fs=e

[4]https://nypost.com/2026/09/23/opinion/im-an-nyc-dad-heres-what-nikole-hannah-jones-got-so-wrong-about-our-schools/

[5] https://www.realcleareducation.com/2022/10/28/catholic_schools_outperformed_public_schools_across_the_us_52135.html

[6] https://nyccharterschools.org/press-releases/nyc-charter-schools-impr

essive-growth-continues/

[7] https://credo.stanford.edu/research-reports/charter-studies/

[8] https://youtu.be/9boQrCPwMws?is=5KhRdaBPk67_YBYe

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Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.