We misread the Joker for sixty-eight years. He wasn’t a flat character by nature; we needed him to be one. Then Heath Ledger showed us his interiority without explanation, and we realized we’d never understood him at all. This week, Nikole Hannah-Jones did something similar with the wrenching paradox of Black parenthood. Ledger played entropy incarnate: the drift of any system toward disorder when nobody actively maintains it.
Schools work the same way. Like the Joker, they’re rarely villains. They’re distressed ecosystems, capable of tremendous good and, left unattended, tremendous harm. What Ledger revealed about a character holds for schools too: framing them as simply good or bad is a way of looking away. A school more loved than resourced will drift toward disorder the way he did, no matter how hard the people inside fight against it.
In her essay, Nikole Hannah-Jones opened a conversation we can’t avoid: how do Black parents build a life for their children without forcing them to choose between potential and well-being? Every summer, the calculation repeats itself. This school will see my child. That school will push my child. Which loss can we live with? Hannah-Jones exposed this as the false bargain it’s always been. She chose the school she believed would see her daughter, knowing it wouldn’t stretch her academically. She discovered that even with that choice, her child didn’t feel fully seen. The immediate problem: your child might receive neither the care nor the rigor you were banking on. The harder truth: you can’t compensate for systemic neglect with proximity and good intentions alone. Hannah-Jones believed her family’s social capital could lift the school’s academic offerings simply by showing up, but entropy doesn’t negotiate. One family’s resources, however significant, can’t rebuild what infrastructure demands require.
This doesn’t mean Black children can’t have both potential and well-being in their formative years. It means building well-being on purpose, because entropy only wins where no one’s watching. Here’s what matters, whether your child is in an under-resourced Black school or standing alone in a white one.
Pre-K
Potential: Ask how the program tracks early reading and number sense. Request results each term. If there’s no system in place, get a developmental screening from your pediatrician.
Well-being: Ask how many children were suspended or expelled last year and what happens instead of sending them home. Join a weekly Black playgroup like Mocha Moms.
Elementary
Potential: Find out whether the school tests every child for gifted programs or only accepts teacher referrals. If referrals, request the written policy and a screening date in writing.
Well-being: Each spring, request a Black teacher for the next grade in writing. Add one weekly Black-majority activity, such as a Saturday academy.
Middle School
Potential: Ask if the school offers Algebra I in eighth grade and how students qualify. Request placement in writing. If it doesn’t offer it, ask about the state virtual school option.
Well-being: Assign your child one consistent Black adult mentor with weekly contact and enroll them in a sorority or fraternity youth program, such as Delta Academy or Guide Right.
High School
Potential: Check ocrdata.ed.gov for the school’s AP and calculus enrollment by race. If those courses show no Black students, enroll your child in community college dual enrollment. If Black enrollment in those courses falls well below overall Black enrollment, request placement in writing.
Well-being: Find one Black professional mentor through 100 Black Men or an HBCU alumni chapter. Register your child for an HBCU pre-college summer program.
We underestimated the Joker for sixty-eight years. Hannah-Jones has ensured we won’t underestimate this choice for one more day.
Dr. Shauna Knox is founder and chief executive of The Emancipation Group, an innovation studio focused on the future of learning for Black students. She taught in Washington, DC classrooms, managed education technology policy at the U.S. Department of Education for six years, serves as Senior Advisor on artificial intelligence and education to Project Evident, and authored two Routledge books on curriculum theory, one receiving an American Educational Research Association honorable mention for book of the year.
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