Imagine you’re in a hot desert. The heat makes the people around you multiply, seemingly thousands of people are surrounding you. All of them go in separate directions in search of the best deal. This isn’t your average desert; this is the new Outlet Mall.

My name is Darby Graff and I work at Brookside Dry Cleaners. I am the face at the front. This means I’m not involved with the actual process of cleaning. I simply just check people's clothes in and once they're clean, hand them back to the customer. Dry cleaning is a strong example of how the working class supports the upper class. Rich people have created a whole industry based on people cleaning their clothes for them. It’s not complicated what the women in the back do, but the customers don’t care, or have any desire to learn… As the wage gap widens, the distance between the workers and the customer widens too. This is evident by the simple fact that when asking one of our regulars the name of the person who cleans their clothes every week, their response: a shrug and a wave.

In every single sector of education, economics matters. They matter in the resources, opportunities, and classes that are offered at any school. Schools with a bigger budget are able to afford their students with more experiences that leave their classes better off. Going to a college prep-school can set you up with more college connections, standardized test preparation, and more one on one time with teachers. This is why it comes as no shock that when Think Impact did a report on scholarship statistics they found that 10% of private school students are awarded scholarships, while only 3% of public school students win scholarships. Scholarships can be earned through various different achievements, 25% of scholarships require testing scores, and each year the number is decreasing. This is good. Standardized testing requirements are an arbitrary way to measure student success because the preparation some receive is unfair to the majority of students left in the dark.