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In a remarkable new interview, 16-year-old Najya Hannah-Jones challenged the choice her parents made about her education. After years in neighborhood schools that affirmed her identity but left significant gaps in her academic preparation, Najya asked why she had been required to bear the cost of trying to change an unjust system.

鈥淭here鈥檚 other options,鈥� she said.

She is right.

In reality, the choices available to families are more dynamic than the binary set laid out in Hannah-Jones鈥� . 

In deciding where to educate our children, my wife and I faced a set of considerations that mirrored the ones described in that essay. We lived in the South Ward of Newark, and our schools reflected the residential segregation inherent to our neighborhood 鈥� and, perhaps most perniciously, the traditions of disinvestment that historically have marked racially segregated public institutions.

Alongside this history of resource disinvestment, our neighborhood schools also were characterized too often by administrative incompetence, where rigorous curricula, effective instruction and performance-based accountability were in short supply.  

As Black parents, we wanted our children to attend schools that reflected their community and affirmed who they were. We also wanted them to be safe, challenged academically and prepared to pursue their highest aspirations.

When we weighed our options, we chose neither an underperforming neighborhood school nor a highly selective, overwhelmingly white school.

We chose KIPP Spark Academy 鈥� a school whose student population reflected the residentially segregated reality of the community in which we lived but where our children were loved, pushed and educated by teachers who believed deeply in them.

Nonprofit charter schools were created, in part, to expand choices for families while giving educators greater flexibility to build different approaches. And for decades, high-performing public charters have proven that predominantly Black and Brown schools can be joyful, affirming, rigorous and academically excellent.

鈥疉 found that Black students attending charter schools that were part of a network gained the equivalent of 41 additional days of learning in reading and 47 in math compared with their peers in traditional public schools. Hispanic students in network-operated schools gained 22 more days in reading and 30 more days in math than their peers in stand-alone charter schools. 

Another study, conducted by researchers at the, used randomized admissions lotteries to find that urban charter attendance led to increased test scores and four-year college enrollment.

鈥疉 found that attending both a KIPP middle and high school increased a student鈥檚 likelihood of graduating from a four-year college within five years by approximately 19 percentage points. If replicated nationally, that effect would be large enough to close the college-completion gap between Black and white students and nearly close the gap between Latino and white students. 

鈥疕annah-Jones is right that generations of housing, funding and political decisions have concentrated poverty and constrained opportunity in too many neighborhood schools. These systemic failures are real, but they cannot excuse schools from providing Black and Brown children with excellent teaching, rigorous coursework and the support they need to succeed today. 

While we must address these very real structural conditions, we must also recognize that resources and demographics alone do not determine school quality.

Building an excellent school requires hard work and disciplined execution. There are no shortcuts or shiny new tools. 

A new from The New York Times鈥檚 Upshot reinforces this point. Thirty-seven education researchers ranked small-group tutoring and evidence-based reading instruction among the most effective ways to improve student achievement. They also identified high-quality curricula, expanded access to advanced courses, teacher coaching and school accountability as promising strategies. 

No single intervention was enough. The researchers鈥� clearest conclusion was that results depend on how well schools carry out these strategies over time.  

That is what strong charter networks are built to do: combine proven practices, adapt them to students鈥� needs, and develop the educators and systems required to sustain them. 

Schools must hire, retain and develop talented teachers. They need rigorous curricula and reliable measures of what students have learned. School leaders must build strong cultures, engage families, identify gaps early and hold adults accountable for results. These fundamentals become even more important in schools serving children who have been denied opportunity for generations. 

This does not diminish the case for integration. Integrated schools can benefit children across race and class. They can deepen understanding, reduce social distance and strengthen the civic cohesion our democracy requires. Prejudice and bias thrive in distance, not proximity. 

However, our children get one education.  

They cannot wait for housing patterns to change, political consensus to emerge or promised reforms to reach their classrooms.鈥�  

High-performing public charter schools prove that we can confront systemic barriers while delivering results for students, today. 

Every child deserves nothing less.

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