Your post addresses both individual effort and the power of social structures to determine the quality of education one receives. I think the funding of schools is a big issue here. If we even forget private schools for a moment and think just about public schools... The book states that since school funding is based on property taxes, the wealthier areas have more funds to spend on educating the children of that community. In fact, the research shows that wealthy districts spend as much as three times more per student as the poor school districts! So, this means that the more affluent districts have better resources, including buildings, classrooms, textbooks, and instructional equipment -- as well as likely better teachers (Durkin, K.F., & Carothers, R.M., 2015).
As a sociologist I put more emphasis on how social structures are very powerful determinants of our life chances. So, if we think about someone who has to go work for their parents after school, we can definitely see how that might not only impact his school work, but also his participation in extracurricular activities. And as we talked about in an earlier discussion, these activities teach children certain skills that may help them succeed later in life (i.e. social capital). We can also imagine someone who's family cannot afford a home computer with internet. It would be much more difficult for them to have the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the modern day workplace than someone who grew up with one in the home. All these little things that are a consequence of the class, race, and gender we were born in to have a large effect on our education. In terms of how this reproduces social class, can you explain what you mean a bit more? How (by what means) does the unequal quality of education students receive, let's say across low income and upper class students, reproduce social class over time?