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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3623 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Beat me by 12 minutes but was going to be surprised if I was first:

Creator of The 1619 Project, Pulitzer Prize winner, and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Nikole Hannah-Jones probably can’t do middle school algebra.
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? [Archive link]

A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.

A ten year follow-up to this article:

Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City [Archive Link]

How one school became a battleground over which children benefit from a separate and unequal system.

The main characters are the mother, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and her daughter, Najya. There is a husband, Faraji, but I’m not sure exactly what it is he does here. Edit: Apparently he is the NYC Public Schools Contracts Committee Chair

I agree with those I follow on X that it really is a remarkable article. The remarkable thing is that Nikole Hannah-Jones in many ways admits she screwed up. She put her money – or in this case, her daughter – where her mouth is and forced Najya to live out Nikole Hannah-Jones's beliefs.

I’ve seen many great takes. Nikole barely understands the education system at all. Nikole doesn’t understand her daughter’s education at all, but I think there’s something deeper going on.

But our experience at P.S. 307 exposed the fallacy that caring families are more important than competent teachers. Here we were, this upper-middle-class, educated, highly involved family with a house brimming with books."

A few paragraphs earlier:

Finally, a few days before school let out for winter break, I received a folder in Najya’s backpack with the math assignments I had been requesting since our conference. Once I tucked her into bed, I sat at my dining room table and scanned one page, then another and another. None of them were graded. I started checking Najya’s work and discovered most of her answers were wrong. Najya believed herself to be good at math — it was her favorite subject. But now I understood she thought she was correctly solving all her problems because her teacher was not checking her work. Similarly, Najya’s writing assignments were rife with uncorrected punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors.

That’s at least a semester if not years without doing one assignment with Najya.

And then again

Algebra, she thought, was the one exception — this was a subject she believed she knew. She had taken it in eighth grade but had to retake it because she hadn’t passed the statewide exam. At the time, I was somewhat concerned, but as Najya had earned A’s in the class I assumed she didn’t pass because, like many children, she has trouble sometimes on standardized tests.That’s at least a semester, if not years, without doing one assignment with her kid.

I don’t think Nikole is just an absentee parent; Nikole went years without checking Najya’s middle school math homework because Nikole can’t do middle school math.

The reality is that Nikole, Faraji, and Najya are just not particularly bright. Nikole and Faraji are part of the most privileged class over the last few decades: midwit people of color. DEI propelled them to the highest of heights. Nikole is legitimately earnest in her beliefs, and sent Najya into classrooms where the average IQ would be a comfortable thermostat setting. I actually don’t think Nikole should beat herself up too much; she only set Najya back slightly. Najya is performing exactly where one would expect a student of “average” intelligence to be in the current schooling system.

As Nikole is fond of doing, she plays some rhetorical sleight of hand:

she [Najya] was earning nearly all A’s and B’s. And at the end of the school year, she passed her state algebra exam.

Reading between the lines, Najya gets A’s and B’s in the soft subjects and was pulled through the very easy state algebra test with tutors and now will never take another math class again. Najya can even rest easy at night comfortable in the belief that she is actually Very SmartTM, and any evidence to the contrary is test anxiety and her mother's fault for sending her to bad schools.

Some factual notes, the school Najya was sent to spends more than $50,000 per student and has an average class size of 10. Via are very own TracingWoodgrains

Here we were, this upper-middle-class, educated, highly involved family with a house brimming with books.

Which apparently neither of the parents bothered reading to the kid, or helping her read. Hence Nikole's shock when she finally saw the school work her daughter was producing.

Some factual notes, the school Najya spends $50,000 per student and has an average class size of 10. Via are very own tracewoodgrains

Damn. Wouldn't it be cheaper to hire a live-in private tutor for every five children?

Live-in is expensive, and people worry about socialisation.

Damn. Wouldn't it be cheaper to hire a live-in private tutor for every five children?

This is to a very real extent what some families are discovering about voucher programs. The state of Arizona seems to have the most developed "direct payment" program, with "Empowerment Scholarship Accounts" that put $6,000+ per child straight into a parent's hands. If you've got four school-aged children to homeschool, the state will put $24,000 directly into your hands to purchase learning resources. If you've got a co-op with ten kids, that's $60,000 to pay a co-op teacher.

And that $6,000 is actually saving Arizona money, because Arizona normally spends about $12,000 per enrolled student on public education. Imagine New York following suit at the 50% mark--the state spends about $37,000 per enrolled student, so they could offer $18,000 per student to parents instead.

The amount of money in American public education is utterly staggering. Teachers complain about their pay (who doesn't?) but how much are teacher's union representatives, highly compensated superintendents, armies of DEI staffers, etc. actually contributing to improved childhood education? I'm pretty comfortable that the answer is "not contributing anything at all," but even if I charitably allow that half of what they do is worthwhile, the level of graft would still be measured as tens of billions of dollars each year. Public education is overwhelmingly a jobs program (and influence laundering machine).

I'm pretty comfortable that the answer is "not contributing anything at all,"

Actively harmful, in many cases. See e.g. the fad to ban algebra from middle schools for equity reasons, which wasn't coming from the teachers (who aren't innocents in the sorry state of the educational system, but their roles are at least grounded in something real).

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