The students attending the elementary school I frequented bring a great deal of cultural capital to the classroom. Infoworks shows that at least two percent of every ethnic group is represented within the school, with 35% of students being white, 33% Hispanic, and 26% African-American. My own classroom was diverse, with only a handful of students being white, and the rest of various races.

This atmosphere provides something Kozol would want, to an extent. A school free of racial segregation; unfortunately, it is not a school free of economic segregation. The school itself does not garner the most funding, and worries greatly about passing the state-issued exams each year. These children, Kozol would argue, are still being denied access to things other children are being granted; a chance at a greater education.

He gives an example about the school system in New York, where "affluent parents pay surprisingly large sums of money to enroll their youngsters, beginning at the age of two or three, in extraordinary early-education programs that give them social competence and rudimentary pedagogic skills unknown to children of the same age in the city's poorer neighborhoods. The most exclusive of the private schools in New York, known as "baby ivies" cost as much as $24,000 for the full-day program. Competetion for admission to these pre-k schools is so extreme that private counselors are frequently retained, at fees as high as $300 an hour, to guide the parents through the application process."

In a stark contrast, students in the Providence public elementary schools do not have the advantages of students in private institutions, or even of those who attend public schools in areas with more money to spend. When asked where they intended to send their children one day, 9 out of 10 teachers from my own school itself stated that they would enroll their children in private schools. Although they were Providence public school teachers, all but one did not want to subject their child to what they felt was not the most stimulating educational facility. One said that yes, they all tried their best, but with the restrictions the school placed upon them, some children inevitably floundered. She did not want her child to be one of them.