Music education majors at many universities in the United States take a course on education equity in or outside the music department. Sometimes called diversity course work, or classes on school access or school funding, these courses have syllabi that sometimes include topics such as unequal tax bases, white-savior narratives, class stereotyping, and income stratification by race. Students are often studying these topics for the first time and face an entire vocabulary to learn so they can describe equity and diversity issues. Students often respond to these topics inquisitively, but for students without firsthand exposure to barriers in rural or urban areas, problems in education equity can seem hypothetical to them--an ivory-tower academic exercise they had to pass through before getting down to the real business of teaching music. In this article the author describes how the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the gap in students' access.