The students complement their surroundings. Girls and boys alike are smartly dressed in blue oxford shirts and khaki pants, the boys wearing ties. Roxbury Prep's academic program is challenging. Classes are small, with no more than twenty students per classroom. The school day is long.
Students then take home one to two hours of homework each night.
There is an expectation in those schools that their students are going to college, and nothing is going to stand in their way. We have that same expectation here. Roxbury Prep is neither private nor suburban, however. It is an inner-city public school. All but a few of its students are African-American, and most live in the struggling Boston neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan.