Do the Dollars Really Make Sense?

PLEASE READ THIS QUOTE FROM THE GREENSBORO NEWS & RECORD AND THEN RESPOND.
Retrieved from "Dollars and Sense." Greensboro News and Record, Sunday, October 9, 2005.
Each morning, the student body at Northwest High School sets out for school from neighborhoods of homes worth more than $200,000. High-end cars line the driveways.
Drawing from the county's wealthiest attendance zone , Northwest also has the county's highest passing rates on state end-of-course tests. The average student scored 120 points above the national average on the SAT.
Students at Dudley High School leave homes half the size and worth just a third as much. They're 3 and a half times as likely to have done their homework the night before in rooms with no air conditioning.
Drawing from the county's poorest attendance zone , Dudley ranks at or near the bottom of those same end-of-course tests. Its students are less than half as likely to pass end-of-course tests in algebra and chemistry.
Across Guilford County, the wealth of residents in an attendance zone has proved to be a better predictor of test scores than class size, teacher experience or racial background, a News & Record analysis shows.
Image retrieved October 12, 2005 from http://www.antongraphics.com/illustration/magazine/DollarsSense.gif