There were plenty of high-achieving low-income students out there. In fact, Hoxby and Avery calculated that in each national high school graduating cohort there were about thirty thousand students with excellent academic records—a GPA of A minus and above, plus ACT or SAT scores that placed them in the top 10 percent of test-takers, meaning 29 and above on the ACT or 1300 and above on the SAT—whose family income fell in the bottom income quartile, meaning their parents earned less than about $42,000.
