Black Children Cannot Wait for Educational Equity
What Nikole Hannah-Jones’s story reveals about school choice, academic preparation and the options Black families deserve to know exist
On March 30, 2023, I saw a Twitter (X) post that I could not forget.
Nikole Hannah-Jones shared that her daughter’s school was offering tutoring for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. Her daughter and several friends had initially signed up. Then the girls researched the admission statistics for Black students and changed their minds.
They had decided that they would not make it.
These were smart, studious 12-year-old Black girls. They had not taken the test. They had not attended a preparation class. They had not yet discovered what they knew, what they needed to learn or how much they could improve.
Still, the numbers had already delivered a verdict.
Do not try.
I knew those statistics well. By that point, I had spent years helping Black and Brown students prepare for admission to New York City’s specialized and screened high schools. I had seen how uneven access to advanced coursework and test preparation shaped who arrived at the SHSAT ready to compete.
But I had also witnessed what happened when students were given rigorous instruction, sufficient time and adults who believed in their capacity to grow.
The statistics described an unequal system. They did not determine the future of every Black child who entered it.
I was heartbroken that these girls could not yet see the distinction.
The message I sent
Two days later, on April 1, 2023, I sent Ms. Hannah-Jones a message through AdmissionSquad’s Instagram account.
I introduced myself as a Black woman who had graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, earned degrees in mathematics and mathematics education, and created an organization dedicated to expanding educational access.
I offered to speak with her daughter and her friends.
I wanted the girls to hear from someone who understood both the inequity of the system and the power of preparation. I wanted them to know that preparing for the SHSAT could expose them to rigorous mathematics and English content, even if they ultimately decided that a specialized high school was not the right choice.
I also shared AdmissionSquad’s Top High Schools List because specialized high schools are not the only excellent public-school options in New York City.
My message received no response.
I cannot know whether it was seen or why it went unanswered, and I will not speculate. I also cannot claim that one conversation would have changed her daughter’s educational path.
But the support existed then, and it exists now.
Three years later
In September 2026, I opened The New York Times Magazine and began reading Ms. Hannah-Jones’s essay, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?”
There were the girls again.
Her daughter and her friends had enrolled in an after-school SHSAT tutoring program. After discovering how few Black and Latino students were admitted to the specialized high schools, the friends concluded that preparation was pointless and withdrew. Her daughter wanted to withdraw too.
Ms. Hannah-Jones required her daughter to take the examination, but neither she nor the other Black students she knew from her school received an offer.
As I continued reading, the story became even more painful.
Her daughter had attended schools where she was not consistently challenged. She complained about receiving little homework. She earned strong grades, including an A in Algebra, but later discovered that she had not mastered much of the material. An outside assessment identified significant gaps in Algebra, fractions, long division and other foundational skills.
Intensive tutoring eventually helped her recover. She adjusted to a selective high school, passed the Algebra Regents and began earning strong grades.
But academic recovery could not erase what the experience had cost her.
Reflecting on her education, she told her mother, “I never really got the education I wanted.”
That sentence stopped me.
It captured a reality that many educators see but that school report cards and passing grades often conceal: a child can appear successful within a school while remaining profoundly underprepared for the opportunities that await outside it.
Two truths must be held together
Ms. Hannah-Jones’s essay is vulnerable, complicated and necessary.
She acknowledges that her commitment to the collective struggle for educational justice came at a personal cost to her daughter. She also forces readers to confront an indefensible reality: affluent families can escape struggling schools while children without money, information or mobility are left behind.
She is right that every child deserves an excellent education.
She is right that the burden of repairing an unequal system should not fall on individual families.
She is right that tutoring cannot substitute for qualified teachers, rigorous curricula, safe classrooms and properly resourced schools.
No individual family created these conditions, and no individual family can repair them. Black parents should never be forced to choose between academic rigor and racial belonging. Our children deserve both.
But another truth must be spoken just as clearly.
Our children cannot wait for the system to become equitable.
A Black parent should not be required to sacrifice her child’s academic development to prove a commitment to Black children collectively. We can fight for systemic transformation while using every available tool to protect and develop the child sitting at our own kitchen table.
That is not hypocrisy.
That is parenting.
What families are rarely told
New York City’s educational system is unnecessarily difficult to navigate.
Parents are expected to understand screened admissions, specialized high schools, priority groups, lottery numbers, audition programs, geographic preferences, course sequences, state examinations and dozens of individual school cultures.
Families with money often purchase help navigating this system. Other families benefit from schools and social networks that begin preparing their children years in advance.
Many Black families are left to discover the rules when the most important deadlines are already approaching.
Some do not learn until seventh or eighth grade that earlier mathematical foundations affect a child’s readiness for Algebra and the SHSAT. Some do not realize that an A in a class does not necessarily mean their child has mastered grade-level material. Some are never told that excellent screened schools exist beyond the most famous names.
Others see discouraging racial statistics and understandably conclude that applying is pointless.
This is how inequality reproduces itself. It operates not only through money and school quality, but also through information, expectations, preparation and time.
Test preparation is also academic enrichment
The public conversation frequently describes test preparation as if it were merely a collection of tricks used to manufacture a score.
High-quality preparation is much more than that.
Preparation is not a substitute for educational justice. It is a bridge children can use while we continue fighting for justice.
When designed responsibly, SHSAT preparation exposes students to multistep problem-solving, advanced reading comprehension, revising and editing, mathematical reasoning, time management and academic perseverance.
A student may decide not to attend a specialized high school. The knowledge developed through serious preparation still belongs to that child.
Preparation cannot guarantee admission, and no ethical program should promise that it can. Students begin at different academic levels and have different amounts of time and support.
But preparation can reveal learning gaps before those gaps become crises.
It can show a student that struggling with difficult content is not proof that she lacks intelligence. It may simply mean that she has not yet been taught what she needs to know.
Most importantly, preparation tells a child something that the statistics may not:
You are entitled to try.
The work already exists
For 10 years, AdmissionSquad has helped families navigate New York City’s high-school admissions process and prepare for competitive academic opportunities.
We have served more than 1,500 students. Approximately 80 percent of our students have earned admission to a specialized or screened high school, and more than 200 Black students have earned specialized high-school offers. In the most recent admissions cycle, five Black boys from AdmissionSquad earned offers, including two to Bronx Science, two to the High School of American Studies at Lehman College and one to the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College.
These students are not evidence that the system is fair.
Their success does not erase the children who lacked access to preparation, learned about the examination too late or attended schools that did not provide the necessary academic foundation.
Their success demonstrates something different.
Black academic talent exists everywhere, including in children whom the system has not adequately prepared to display it.
The answer is not to present a selective education as the only path to success. It is also not to tell Black children that pursuing one makes them complicit in inequality.
The answer is to give families honest information, meaningful choices and adequate preparation.
What parents can do now
Parents should not rely exclusively on grades to understand whether a child is learning. Ask to see graded assignments, assessment results, reading levels and examples of written work. Compare current performance with grade-level standards.
Pay attention when your child says school feels too easy. Boredom may not mean everything is fine. It may mean the child’s academic abilities are not being fully developed.
Seek outside enrichment before a crisis emerges. Tutoring should not begin only after a child fails. Summer programs, academic clubs, independent reading, mathematics enrichment, writing instruction and early test preparation can expose children to content their schools may not provide.
Research multiple schools. Specialized high schools are important options, but they are not the only ones. New York City also has strong screened, consortium, career and technical education, arts, dual-language and other specialized programs.
Most importantly, do not allow racial statistics to become a prophecy in your home.
Children should understand the barriers they face, but they must also know that a barrier is not a command to surrender.
Advocacy and action belong together
I do not share my unanswered message to shame Ms. Hannah-Jones or claim that one conversation would have changed her daughter’s educational path. It would be dishonest to make that assertion.
I share it because the moment represents something larger.
While the public debates whether families should remain in struggling schools or leave them, Black educators and community organizations are already building additional pathways. We are tutoring students, helping parents interpret admissions rules, identifying strong schools, diagnosing learning gaps and reminding children that they belong in rigorous academic spaces.
This work does not receive the visibility of a national essay, but it exists.
We need structural change. We need equitable funding, experienced teachers, meaningful curricula, transparent grading, safe classrooms and high expectations in every school.
We also need immediate strategies for the children enrolled today.
The fight for educational justice must continue. But justice delayed through another generation is not justice for the child who needs Algebra instruction this afternoon.
We must advocate for every Black child.
We must also protect, prepare and create opportunities for the Black children entrusted directly to us.
They should not have to become symbols of our values before they are allowed to become the fullest versions of themselves.
Our children deserve educational justice in the future.
They also deserve access to excellence right now.
Resources for New York City families
AdmissionSquad will be sharing:
Our Top NYC Middle Schools List
A parent’s guide to evaluating school quality beyond grades and ratings
Academic enrichment and test-preparation options
Early planning resources for families in Grades 5 through 8
Visit AdmissionSquad to explore these resources and learn how to help your child prepare for the opportunities ahead.
