Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to a failing public school despite being a multimillionaire to make a point: That she’s not a hypocrite who sends her children to private school like other school-choice opponents.
Now Hannah-Jones has some regrets.
She’s seen firsthand how New York’s public school system exists to employ teachers — and educating students is an afterthought.
By her own account, a third-grade teacher missed so many days that Najya was parked in kindergarten classrooms to “work on her own.”
In fourth grade, her teachers reported Najya was below grade level in every subject, yet when her parents asked to see her graded work, none of it had been marked.
The school’s mandatory reading assessment had apparently never been administered.
Her honors-track A’s, it turned out, were fake, concealing her lack of understanding of division and fractions.
None of this should surprise anyone.
Barely one-quarter of the students in P.S. 307 reach minimum levels of proficiency in math or reading.
The DEI advocate has a diagnosis for all this: segregation, underfunding, systemic racism, and the white parents who won’t send their children to schools like hers.
Yet Hannah-Jones never addresses how teachers can act so unprofessionally without any repercussion.
It’s not for lack of resources: P.S. 307 spends over $50,000 per student, per year, an amount equivalent to private school tuition in some of the best institutions in the country.
It has a student-teacher ratio of just nine to one.
Under the union contract, a New York City teacher with a master’s degree and eight years’ experience earns about $100,000, and the top of the scale reaches $140,000 for a 180-day work year — regardless of whether they actually do their job.
This is not a starved institution, but one of the best-funded elementary schools in the world.
But fewer than half of the students show up at least 90% of the time — no wonder they don’t learn.
Money isn’t the problem; incentives are.
Every failure Hannah-Jones catalogs, whether absent teachers, ungraded work, faked assessments or no-show principals, is exactly the kind of failure that would get an employee fired in any private business.
Yet in a New York City public school, teachers get a pass.
Teachers earn tenure after four years.
After that, removing one requires a “just cause” hearing, a process that routinely drags on for years and costs the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ratings, evaluations and discipline are all governed by a contract negotiated by the teachers’ union, whose entire purpose is to make sure no one is fired no matter what.
The proof is less than a mile away from Najya’s former school.
Community Roots Charter School sits at the edge of another public housing project and services mostly low-income black and Hispanic students.
Its students post proficiency rates above 80% on state tests — and 91% percent of kids attend at least 90% of the time.
But it spends roughly half of what P.S. 307 spends per student.
No wonder admission must be managed via random lottery due to overwhelming demand.
The key difference is this: The charter school is not beholden to the union.
That means its teachers can be dismissed for not doing their jobs, its students can be expelled more easily for bad behavior that disrupts the class, and its parents have choices.
Unfortunately, not all students have the opportunity to attend a charter school — since New York caps the number of charters in the city.
Black and Hispanic children in Brooklyn don’t need another lecture about segregation.
They need what Najya never got at P.S. 307: Administrators and teachers that are accountable for their students’ success.
Daniel Di Martino is a Manhattan Institute fellow.
