Nikole Hannah-Jones reflects on her decision to enroll daughter Najya in a segregated, high-poverty New York school instead of selective elementary schools. In a 2016 Times Magazine essay, she argued that improving segregated schools required enrolling in them. A decade later, Najya confronted her mother in seventh grade after discovering her middle school's poor test scores and ranking. "Did I know that it was bad when I chose to send her there?" Najya asked. "Why would I do that?" She told her mother: "I had to live through the school.

You didn't." Hannah-Jones admits the experience has been humbling: "my daughter's sacrifice could not transform a system that those who hold the most power refuse to change." When applying to high school, Najya targeted selective schools, saying: "I want to go to the best public school... I want to go to a great college." Hannah-Jones now believes individual parents cannot transform the system alone and emphasizes the need for political will toward integration policy. The interview appears in today's Times Magazine cover story.