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"As families across Oklahoma gear up for the holidays, a segment of the state's senior population faces a lonely season. Home Instead Senior Care in Oklahoma City aims to provide a more cheerful and happy Christmas to seniors who are homebound and feel isolated. Be a Santa to a Senior is a program sponsored by Home Instead that gathers gifts, wraps them up for Christmas and delivers them to deserving seniors."

"[M]ost low-income families don't have many options when it comes to choosing schools for their children. School boundaries are determined by school districts, according to Greg Duncan, professor of education at UC Irvine. In many cases, the lines are drawn in such a way that all the low-income children in the district are put in one school and the middle- and high-income children in others."

"To maintain or build the levels of racial diversity on selective campuses, it is necessary to maintain race-conscious admissions. While there are higher shares of blacks and Hispanics among low-income Americans, their smaller shares of the whole population mean that whites make up by far the largest portion of low-income families."

"The number of homeless students in the Salem-Keizer School District grew to its highest level since the recession began in 2007, according to Oregon Department of Education numbers released Thursday."

"Most unsuccessful students are not different from successful ones in their level of natural ability. The difference lies in significant skills and personal characteristics established in the earliest years of life preceding entrance into the school system, which are very much a factor of the home environment and parenting skills children experience. These are highly correlated with socioeconomic level and, therefore, demonstrate their impact most significantly in schools that are most impoverished."

"After all, with an education from HISD's best public schools and the polish from a Texas university, these middle-class kids will meet, learn from and influence non-Texans throughout their business and private lives. It's the brilliant, low-income students who are the great loss. If they aren't exposed to global ideas and opportunities through college, they may never encounter them at all."

"Marc Spencer has a vision: to have low-income youth graduate from college. After becoming CEO of Juma Ventures, Spencer changed the organization's mission from helping low-income youth get into college to ensuring they complete a four-year higher education degree."

"The population of homeless students in Oregon has leveled off, but the numbers still paint a bleak picture of Oregon's economic recovery as families struggle to find stable housing amid strained resources. Across Oregon, 20,370 students --or about 3.65 percent --were identified by school districts as having unstable housing at some point during the 2011-12 school year, according to data from the Oregon Department of Education's annual count."

"The North Charleston school was one of only nine in the state to earn an excellent' rating on the state report card among schools where more than 90 percent of its students live in poverty. That's an improvement from last year, when the school rated average,' and it's a complete turnaround from 2008, when the school rated at-risk.'"

"The MMSI, created by the nonprofit Mass Insight Education, is designed to increase student participation and performance in AP math, science and English courses. In 2010, more than 7,800 AP exams were taken in MMSI schools with an eligible student population of 18,955. Only 3,685 AP exams were taken in a comparison group of schools that had 22,911 eligible students. College matriculation rates for low-income students in MMSI schools were 14 percent higher than state and national averages."

"For the first time, half of Illinois public schools now serve populations that are at least 40 percent low-income, said Robin Steans, Advance Illinois executive director. In addition, in the mere two years between 2010 and 2012, the state's low-income public school population grew from 45 percent to 49 percent in K-12 and from 26 percent to 32 percent in four-year colleges."

"Minority students - as well as children who live in poverty, are learning English or have special needs - continue to fall behind their peers on state assessments, data show. Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass on Tuesday directed officials at all of Iowa's public schools to adopt an instruction and assessment method called Response to Intervention in an effort to boost student scores. Effective teachers and rigorous standards are also crucial to improving performance, he said."