The Atlantic staff writer Jenisha Watts said Wednesday she plans to send her young Black son to private school, citing her own experience with struggling schools while choosing a different path from friend and 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, who recently confronted regrets about her daughter’s public school education.
Watts said in her Atlantic essay that Hannah-Jones’ experience helped convince her she could not make the same decision for her son.
“I could never make the choice she made,” Watts said. “I know too well what can go wrong. I’m sending him to a private preschool, and I plan to apply for private kindergarten too.”
Hannah-Jones, who previously said that scrutiny of her decision should also focus on Black children whose families cannot afford better options, responded directly to Watts in a new statement to Fox News Digital.
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“I have a deep respect for Jenisha and all she has overcome,” she said. “Our concerns and values as parents are always shaped, to some degree, by our own experiences as children. Unlike Jenisha, I got a parachute out of my segregated school, and that changed my life. And, as a result, I have always thought about the equal worth of children who didn’t get that parachute and how that shaped their lives as well.
“I still believe, as I always have, in public schools as necessary and common good, that education should be the great equalizer and that parents should not have to choose between doing what’s right for their children and what’s right for community.”
Hannah-Jones said the problems raised by both families ultimately required broader policy changes.
“In the end, the inequality I write about and that Jenisha experienced is systemic and will only be fixed if we acquire the political will to make different policy choices that value the inherent worth of all of our children, even if those children happen to be born Black and poor,” she said.
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School choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, offered a sharply different assessment in a statement to Fox News Digital, arguing Watts was right to prioritize her son rather than wait for improvements to the public school system.
“Jenisha Watts is doing what a parent is supposed to do. She is putting her son first,” he said. “Watts has options most families do not. The scandal is not that she is using them. The scandal is that politicians and teachers unions fight to keep those options out of reach for everyone else. School choice is the equalizer. Trapping kids in failure factories by zip code only makes inequality worse.
“It is time to fund students, not systems, so all families can have a shot at the American dream. If Hannah-Jones and her friends actually want to help other children, they should fight for the funding to follow the student. You do not fix public schools by locking kids in them. You fix them by giving families a way out — and giving those schools a reason to change.”
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Watts described Hannah-Jones as a “confidant and friend” and defended her against critics who accused her of sacrificing her daughter’s education for her ideals. But Watts said her own childhood in Lexington, Kentucky, where she described receiving an “abysmal education,” shaped the choice she is now making for her son.
Watts said those academic deficiencies followed her into adulthood.
“I’m a staff writer for The Atlantic, and I’m writing a memoir, and I still can’t shake off my poor education,” she wrote.
The debate followed Hannah-Jones’ recent New York Times Magazine essay revisiting a choice she first detailed in a 2016 Times Magazine cover story. Hannah-Jones said she eventually apologized to her daughter Najya after reviewing academic problems that followed her through elementary and middle school.
Najya told her mother she wished her own education had received more consideration alongside Hannah-Jones’ 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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New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels defended the public school system’s mission in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“From day one, I have made it clear: Every student, regardless of background or ability, should feel affirmed, valued and held to high expectations,” Samuels said. “At New York City Public Schools, we know that our students benefit from inclusive environments where every child has access to rigorous academics, student supports and diverse learning opportunities.
“This is the crux of my vision of a truly integrated public school system, and I am committed to doing the work to make that a reality.”
Watts said her decision was not meant as a condemnation of Hannah-Jones or parents who choose differently but reflected what she sees as a broader failure that forces families to weigh their children’s immediate interests against struggling schools.
“America should not force parents to make that kind of choice,” she said.
