And in my experience, "poor" here doesn't necessarily mean impoverished, either (although that clearly makes it worse). This applies even to average, middle-class U.S. high schools. There's very little info on what opportunities are available or how to go about obtaining them. The best students are usually off the school's radar because they have no problem passing the state tests (and why should anyone care beyond that?).

You could replace "poor" with "not rich" and get the same result. I never thought of myself as poor at all until I had some encounters similar to what the author describes.