1619 Project founder regrets school choice for her daughter, admits putting ideals ahead of her education

New York Times Magazine reporter and creator of the controversial 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, acknowledged Sunday that she regretted aspects of the decision to send her daughter to predominantly Black, high-poverty public schools in Brooklyn, New York, after the now-16-year-old told her she did not receive the education she wanted — a decade after Hannah-Jones described the choice as an effort to challenge school segregation.

In a newly released New York Times Magazine essay, Hannah-Jones described revisiting years of emails with her daughter Najya’s teachers and principals and confronting what she called a truth she could no longer suppress.

"Now I felt overcome with regret. Najya deserved better," Hannah-Jones said. "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."

Hannah-Jones told Fox News Digital on Sunday that the broader focus should remain on families who lack the resources to pursue better educational options for their children.

"I hope people concerned about the choice my husband and I made for our daughter will have equal or more outrage for the thousands of Black children whose parents don’t have the resources to send them to better schools," she said. "As I write in the piece, there is no absolution to be had for any of us."

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Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and longtime school choice advocate, responded to Hannah-Jones' essay in a statement to Fox News Digital, arguing parents should prioritize their children's individual educational needs.

"Parents should put their children first. They should not sacrifice them to a failing government school system in the name of ideology," DeAngelis said. "Nikole Hannah-Jones now says she regrets putting her ideals ahead of her daughter’s education. That admission is long overdue."

"I welcome Nikole Hannah-Jones to the school choice revolution," he continued. "Maybe she will start to understand that pulling her daughter from the failing school system would have done more to improve those schools — through competition — than the status quo ever did. You don’t fix public schools by locking kids in them without any accountability. You fix them by giving them a reason to change their ways."

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Hannah-Jones said the realization culminated in a conversation with Najya as she was writing the essay. She apologized to her daughter after reviewing problems that had followed her through elementary and middle school.

"I feel like you got cheated," Hannah-Jones said. "And I’m sorry for that."

Najya responded by telling her mother that she wished her own education had received greater consideration alongside Hannah-Jones' broader concerns about educational inequality.

"Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted," Najya said.

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Hannah-Jones’ assessment marked a shift from the position she described in a widely discussed 2016 New York Times Magazine essay, when she explained why she and her husband enrolled Najya at P.S. 307, a Brooklyn school that was then overwhelmingly Black and Latino and served a largely low-income population. Hannah-Jones said at the time she believed middle-class families could help improve segregated schools by enrolling their children and investing in them.

"I worried — I worry still — about whether I made the right decision for our little girl. But I knew I made the just one," Hannah-Jones said in 2016.

The new essay detailed academic problems that became more apparent as Najya grew older. At Unison, her middle school, Najya earned strong grades and took honors courses, but later said she and her friends realized that they were not being sufficiently challenged. 

Hannah-Jones described limited homework, inexperienced teachers and gaps in her daughter's math preparation that became especially apparent after Najya entered a more academically demanding high school.

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Unison Principal Emily Paige acknowledged in the essay that some attempts to accommodate students who entered the school academically behind had unintended consequences, including the decision to eliminate homework.

"It is important to not, in our pursuit of being antiracist, lower expectations," Paige said. "Because this is what happens, right? It’s racism under the guise of antiracism."

DeAngelis told Fox News Digital that Hannah-Jones’ experience should lead her to support policies allowing education funding to follow children to schools selected by their families.

"Hannah-Jones can afford better options. Most families cannot," DeAngelis said. "She should fight for the funding to follow the student so more parents have the same educational opportunities she can buy for herself. School choice is an equalizer."

The debate comes as school choice remains an active issue in New York.

Fox News Digital reported last week that teachers' unions were opposing Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's plan to participate in a federal tax-credit scholarship program designed to help families pay for educational options outside their assigned schools.

The New York Times' 1619 Project is a long-form collaboration that seeks to "reframe the country's history" by bringing slavery and racism to the forefront of the national narrative. 

While praised by liberals, the project has faced intense scrutiny and pushback from prominent historians who have publicly disputed its factual accuracy, particularly its claims regarding the motivations behind the American Revolution.

Despite the criticism, the 1619 Project's theories of American history were later developed into an educational curriculum with the help of the Pulitzer Center.

Fox News Digital reached out to New York Public Schools for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.