September 26, 2026 - OpenAI Models Accessed Government Websites

The most talked-about essay of the week comes from Nikole Hannah-Jones, and it deserves the attention.

Ten years ago, she and her husband could afford to send their daughter to almost any school in New York. They chose a poor, mostly Black public school in Brooklyn. Their thinking was that if families with money and influence kept avoiding schools like that, those schools would never get better. They hoped to help improve it, to set an example for other parents, and to put the greater good ahead of their own advantage. She wrote about the decision in The New York Times Magazine, and it made her a hero to people who agreed with her.

Now, a decade later, she's written that it didn't work out. Her daughter's teachers didn't grade her work. A required reading assessment apparently was never given. She earned A's in an algebra class she didn't understand and needed intensive tutoring to catch up in high school. Now 16, she told her mother: "Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me." Hannah-Jones apologized.

She still believes the real problem is segregation. Her critics, including Daniel Di Martino in the New York Post, say her own story proves something else. Her daughter's elementary school spends about $50,000 per student, far above the district average. The problem, they argue, isn't money. It's a system where nobody is held accountable when teachers don't do their jobs.

Strip away the politics, and what's left is a dilemma every parent recognizes: do you do what's best for your own child, or what you believe is best for everyone's? Hannah-Jones chose the second, and her daughter paid a price. Whether that makes her admirable or misguided probably depends on which side of that question you're on.

Would you have made the same choice?

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