February 18, 2010 12:16PM # The Paucity of Poor Kids in Many Public Schools By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) --- SHARE There’s a widespread belief that public schools are homogeneous and all inclusive while private schools are bastions of the elite. This was proven to be a myth decades ago by the renowned sociologist James Coleman, and as far as I know, that pattern of findings hasn’t changed in recent years. Nevertheless, the myth continues. A new [Fordham Institute paper ](http://edexcellence.net/index.cfm/news_private-public-schools)provides a partial antidote, pointing out that quite a few public schools enroll virtually no low-income kids, making them bastions of the elite. Where the Fordham paper trips up a bit is in calling these elite public schools “private public schools.” As already noted above, private schools are, on average, *better* economically integrated than their government counterparts, so this phrase is exactly backwards and, as Sara Mead points out, is quite [a slap in the face](http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/the-poor-you-will-have-always-with-you-not-in-some-public-schools.html) to the many private schools that do yeoman’s work serving large numbers of low-income students. Still, good to have folks taking note of these data. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).