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"The results are now in, and they suggest that basic information can substantially increase the number of low-income students who apply to, attend and graduate from top colleges. Among a control group of low-income students with SAT scores good enough to attend top colleges but who did not receive the information packets only 30 percent gained admission to a college matching their academic qualifications. Among a similar group of students who did receive a packet, 54 percent gained admission, according to the researchers."

"The Rapier Family Foundation donated $50,000 toward BCFS Health and Human Services' West San Antonio community development project, Guadalupe Street Coffee. The coffee shop is located in the heart of the West Side, where only 56 percent of local residents over the age of 25 graduated from high school or achieved any degree of higher education. More than 52 percent of residents live below the poverty level. Guadalupe Street Coffee provide job training to teenagers and educational opportunities for high school students. Young people are encouraged to stop by for poetry nights, movies and dance shows. Teens can also get help with homework and filling out financial aid forms. They also learn about healthy eating and proper nutrition."

"An anonymous $2 million gift to the Denver Scholarship Foundation will provide aid to a group of students who are ineligible for federal assistance for college. The gift will aid Denver Public Schools students who are undocumented immigrants but have received federal deferred-action status. [] Now, DPS students who receive deferred-action status under a program to grant temporary work permits to immigrants who were brought here as children will be able to skip the FAFSA requirement and prove, instead, that they qualify for free or reduced lunch, which is the district's measure of poverty."

"Some of the emptiest buildings are in low-income neighborhoods, where more than half of families there have flocked to fast-growing charter schools. Closing such underenrolled buildings, the chancellor said, will allow her to save $8.5 million a year and concentrate resources on teaching and learning."

"The widely accepted life expectancy on the street is about 64. Without beefed-up efforts to help the aging homeless, Dennis Culhane, the study's chief author, estimates that 10 years from now, half of the single indigent adults born from 1959 to 1964 will be dead - and in 15 years, almost all will be gone."

"The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, would reduce a parent's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families payments by up to 30 percent for students who fail a grade. It was amended to limit maximum penalties to parents who do not attend parent-teacher conferences, enroll their child in tutoring or attend a parenting course. Special needs students would be exempt from the law."

"Proponents say tax-credit and voucher programs offer families a way to escape failing public schools. But critics warn that by drawing money away from public schools, such programs weaken a system left vulnerable after years of crippling state budget cuts while showing little evidence that students actually benefit."

"The authors found that many of the top low-income students don't know about the amount of financial aid available at the top colleges, and wind up going to community colleges or four-year institutions closer to their homes. They frequently don't have role models who have attended elite colleges. They don't think they can hack the coursework or afford the ancillary expenses to attend such schools."

"This is why the best early childhood programs pay for themselves. They reduce welfare rolls and prison costs, and have been shown to cut the need for special education services nearly in half. So the real question here isn't whether to invest in preschool. It's what kind of preschool it is: Quality matters."

"Of course, Mr. Obama's initiative has come face to face with the reality of federal budget constraints, as the sequester - or across-the-board spending cuts - begins to take effect. Those cuts will stymie Obama's early childhood education agenda for the foreseeable future, but expanding preschool for low-income families is still an idea whose time has come. Based on what the White House has released so far and some judicious reading between the lines, there are several aspects of the president's preschool plan to applaud."

"Of all students in households with income below $50,000, only 45 percent of those who did not have their own savings account enrolled in college, but 65 percent of those with savings from $1 to $499 enrolled and 72 percent of those with savings of $500 or more enrolled. Variations of children's savings accounts -- some with matching amounts donated -- have cropped up around the country, through the influence of several organizations, including the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a Washington, D.C., organization aimed at alleviating poverty through economic opportunity and which worked with Propel in developing the proposal."

"Despite taxpayer "investment" of nearly $8 billion per year, Head Start consistently fails to reap a return for either taxpayers or participating children. In December 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that administers Head Start, released a scientifically rigorous evaluation of more than 5,000 children participating in the program. It found that Head Start had little to no impact on cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting practices of participants."