Opinion: We Don’t Have to Choose Between Racial Justice and Academic Excellence

I lived in the gaps and broken promises that my beloved, rich but segregated New York City has to offer. But when I read Nikole Hannah-Jones’s vulnerable and piercing essay this weekend describing the educational, ethical, and emotional obstacle course she maneuvered for her daughter’s education, my heart dropped into my stomach, Simone Biles style, and stuck the landing with a hard swallow. I don’t know Nikole or her daughter, Najya Hannah-Jones, but I know the choices they describe.

And yet I cannot shake the heartbreaking but somehow comforting feeling: parents like my mom, the Hannah-Jones family, and others like them need not navigate these impossible choices anymore.

My early educational experiences sent a clear message to me: opportunity did not live in neighborhoods like mine. I was raised in Jamaica, Queens, in a single-parent household. My mother had me zig-zagging our segregated school district in search of the best schools. I was in my third public school by third grade. Early on, I benefited from gifted and talented programs in my predominantly Black district. But when it came time for middle school, it took two city buses and a Jamaica Avenue transfer to get to school, having commuted out of district to predominantly white and Asian Bayside, Queens. Even as a child, I was old enough to understand the message behind my educational odyssey: opportunity does not live here.

Our city’s broken high school admissions process was no help either. Shut out of “specialized” high schools, I won acceptances to two of the nation’s top boarding schools through Prep for Prep. The diversity of my schools, the privileged “luck,” left me with the values and commitment to kids like me and the communities I came from. So I became a New York City public school teacher.

Twenty years ago, I was a rookie teacher in one of the largest elementary schools in the Bronx. It didn’t take long for me to become disenchanted, not with our kids or families, but with leadership and policies that constantly lowered the bar. I remember my union representative counseling me to stop tutoring my students in the morning before class or after-school for free because I was making other teachers look bad.

Working within that system that I knew was not working, while trying to recreate and reimagine a new system, led me to public charter schools. After spending nine years in leadership at neighborhood charter school Coney Island Prep, I now lead KIPP NYC Public Schools.

Charter schools are public schools. They are free, publicly funded, and held highly accountable – sometimes by multiple state agencies. They hold open board meetings, and community leaders and parents sit on these boards. Most importantly, our schools serve kids in the very districts and neighborhoods they call home. Charter schools routinely outperform their local districts, the city, and state on standardized testing with less funding per student – even though our kids deserve more. Increasingly, they serve 1 in every 6 kids in our public schools.

A fashionable criticism of charter schools is that they siphon resources from neighborhood schools. But we are the neighborhood schools. The best charters already reimagine what our neighborhood schools should be.

Thirty-one years later, the original KIPP Academy is in the same building it has always been in the South Bronx. On 133rd Street in West Harlem, New York City Public Schools once operated I.S. 195 Roberto Clemente, where just 13% of students could read on grade level, and 17% were proficient in math in 2010. Today, that same campus is bustling with 1,500 elementary and middle school students. At STAR Elementary or Infinity Middle, students outperform their district peers by 20 percentage points in reading and a whopping 40 points in math, with proficiency exceeding 80%. The annual Black History Month showcase at AMP in Crown Heights would make Marcus Garvey grin in its unapologetically black and authentically Caribbean celebration of student voice and pride. Thousands of kids no longer have to commute like I did, or wonder whether their high school will be rigorous.

Borough to borough, block by block, some schools are diverse-by-design, and others are intentionally investing in the underserved; the battleground Hannah-Jones once described is shifting. We don’t have to make tradeoffs between racial justice values and academic results anymore.

At KIPP NYC, our schools are in and of the communities we serve. The tax dollars that our parents pay belong to the community, and they stay in our community. For years, we have asked why our students don’t receive equal funding, while wondering what would be possible if we received our fair share. Opportunity does live here, no matter your zip code, if we’re willing to fight for high-performing charter schools.

My social and racial justice values also make it impossible for me to ignore that not everyone involved in charter schools shares my politics. Some charter school supporters would just as easily undermine all public education, and actively work to weaken the systems that support all students. But we also know that not all public or elected officials are stewards of the agencies they lead or public preferences either. We have public servants who serve the public good, and some who act in service of their own egos or pockets. There are great public charter schools and questionable ones. The difference for us in charter culture is that parents regularly email, call, or text their child’s teachers and principals and expect a response.

I have long wrestled with the reality that I lead a segregated school system. The wealthiest city in the world should not have segregated schools, or 1 in 4 children growing up in poverty. But I won’t wait or just reimagine the system when I can actively work to build something better for the younger me, for parents like my mom, for the next Hannah-Jones family, and for Nayja and the kids to come.

Leslie-Bernard Joseph is the chief executive officer of KIPP NYC Public Schools, a network of 18 free, public charter schools serving nearly 10,000 students in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.