"The bottom 20 percent of households lost over three times as much in real earnings as did households at the top," says Michael Cassidy, President of The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a Virginia-based independent fiscal and economic policy research organization. "As a result, income inequality in Northern Virginia has grown substantially since the start of the recession. In 2007, the top 10 percent of Northern Virginia households brought in 7.61 times the income of the bottom 10 percent. In 2010, they brought in 8.5 times as much." The article details the increasing difference between the incomes of Virginia's highest and lowest classes. The annual income of the highest 10 percent has grown almost 100% in three years, an unhealthy and irregular amount compared to the rest of the country.

The economic standards of these two schools, Freeman and Thomas Jefferson, are set straight by this excerpt, but it is also worth mentioning that the money spent on these students is drastically different. The book goes on to explain how the relative success of students at these schools is also impacted by their situation, with 90 percent of "Tee-Jay" students passing their exams, well below the state average, and Freeman students passing the majority of their AP class exams.