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"The most important consideration should be the effect of a voucher program on Tennessee's most vulnerable students. The task force rightly reached a consensus that any program should target only low-income students. A bill that broadens eligibility to include students from financially stable families should be rejected."

"In fact, federal data released last week shows that Minnesota ranked dead last in four-year graduation rates for Latino and American Indian students, second to last for African American students, and near the bottom for low-income students overall. That's the case even though an estimated 500 related educational initiatives spend about $90 million annually in the metro area, mostly on top of school district budgets."

"Essentially what happened over the course of the recession is that the face of poverty sort of changed.' said Jeanette Batiste, chief operating officer for Foodlink. People were coming into hardship that had never experienced that level of hardship before.' Experts and educators don't expect the rise in students facing economic hardship to level off any time soon, creating new challenges for schools as their populations change. When students are experiencing stress at home, their academics could suffer, or they may act out. And students may need basic services from schools that they didn't need before, like coats or take-home snacks."

"Amid a major school-choice overhaul that targets uneven achievement across its schools, next fall the district is designating some city areas as high-need' using an uncommon combination of family income, test scores and English fluency. It will reserve seats for children from those areas in 10 schools with the lowest portion of low-income students, including six with perennial waiting lists."

"Time Warner is working with nine school districts and about 30 charter schools, appealing to families of low-income students with offers of Internet connections for $9.95 a month. Families that relocate will obtain Internet service at their new address at no added cost. That's important in districts where students and parents move often."

"We need to re-vision our approach to education. Rather than looking to the school, we must look at the individual child. Children of poverty are not a homogeneous group. The differences among them render externally imposed programs meaningless. The focus must be on the life circumstances and learning needs of our young people, both now and in the future. Based on this analysis, we must provide specific supports to ensure that each child is successful."

"Florida also focused on preparing all students for college by becoming a national leader in giving low-income students access to Advanced Placement (AP) classes and encouraging them to take college entrance exams. Last year, SAT scores for Florida's African American and Hispanic students increased even as they stagnated in most of the country."

"Seniors may have the lowest poverty rates these days, but they've got the loudest voice in the debate about where our scarce public money should go and whose ox should be gored. As Portland senior Kit Hogan put it, We deserve what we have. Pick on someone else.'"

Commentary: Robert Giloth, the Annie E. Casey Foundation

"After years of increases, the poverty rate in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools held steady this year at 54 percent, virtually unchanged from last fall. Almost 78,000 of the 143,600 students in preK-12 qualify for lunch subsidies to low-income families, used nationally to gauge student poverty levels."

"There were about 12,400 homeless students in Jefferson County Public Schools during the 2011-2012 school year. That amounted to about 13 percent of all students and a 21 percent increase from the prior year, according to the housing coalition. The school district's figures show about 100 fewer homeless students, with the difference attributed to students who didn't finish the school year in the system."

"When poverty levels and student segregation are taken into account, the U.S. education system is shown to be among the very best in the world. The proportion of children in the U.S. living in poverty is above 20 percent; in Texas, it is above 25 percent. But in Finland, the poverty rate is below 5 percent. There is practically no poverty at all in Singapore because most low-wage jobs there are filled by residents of nearby countries whose children don't take tests in Singapore. Some countries segregate students into college and vocational tracks with only the college-bound included in the tests."