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"It's not because of lack of demand. I have long been a supporter of the president, and I continue to applaud many of his education initiatives, including his embrace of charter schools. But his administration's opposition to giving low-income families the full slate of educational options - captured when he zeroed out funding for the program in his budget this year, despite the earlier deal in which he agreed to reauthorizing it - is unacceptable."

"He noted that childhood poverty is extraordinarily high in Schenectady. Of four surveys collected by the American Community Survey in the past two years, three estimate a childhood poverty rate of 36 percent to 39 percent. The other survey -- the most recent of the four but the one with the smallest sample group -- estimated Schenectady's childhood poverty at a whopping 50 percent."

"A shift toward economic affirmative action would represent an enormous change in university admissions. Although many colleges claim to provide a boost to low-income applicants, as they do for minorities, data show that most selective colleges and universities may not. In 2005, William Bowen and his colleagues found that being black or Latino increased one's chances of admissions by 28 percentage points but that being low-income increased one's chances not at all."

"While we agree that poverty creates numerous obstacles to student learning, we see proof points in classrooms every day that tell us we don't need to wait to eradicate poverty to give every child a great education."

"But in other ways, the city is failing its students and its best teachers. In DCPS,' the study concludes, highly rated teachers are much less likely to teach in schools with high concentrations of poverty than in other schools, and that disparity is greater than what we found in other districts.' Top teachers make up 42 percent of the lowest poverty school faculties but only 11 percent in the highest poverty schools."

"An early childhood education expert testified Tuesday that Texas is not doing a good job preparing low-income youngsters for school. High-quality pre-K programs help close the achievement gap and put low-income students in the game. You give them a shot,' W. Steven Barnett testified in the school funding lawsuit against Texas."

"The Asheville City Schools Foundation recently received the largest gift in the organization's history. A couple who wish to remain anonymous have given $100,000 to the foundation to strengthen current programs and to serve as matching gifts for the next three years. This gift will be divided among the current and next two fiscal years as a part of the organization's Changing Futures' theme. This year's portion of the gift will help fund a full-time volunteer to work at the Asheville City Schools preschool to work with the more than 100 children in poverty there."

"Schools in Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 fell short of federal standards, but leaders stress students continue to perform well according to other measures. None of the district's six traditional high schools achieved adequate yearly progress as set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The district has 12,300 students, 23 percent of whom are considered low income, according to a state report card released Oct. 31."

"Charter schools educate a smaller proportion of metro Atlanta's impoverished students than the public school systems in which those charters are located, a new analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows."

"Metro schools are unusual in the high number of low-income students they serve, Kindall said, adding that research proves poverty has a big impact on education. But Kindall also says the school system hasn't focused the proper amount of energy on the problem."

"Yet changes to the core mission of California's community colleges threaten that role. State efforts to ease overcrowding and help colleges adapt to budget cuts are backfiring in rural districts already burdened by vast territories, withered economies, high poverty rates and dwindling populations. Rather than serving lifelong learners,' the state's 112 colleges have been directed to focus on students seeking to acquire such basic skills as English, transfer to four-year schools or earn associate degrees or certificates."

"While we wonder what should be done about our region's most demanding public high school - Thomas Jefferson- having only 3 percent of its students from poor families, let's consider a different experiment in selective education. What if we created a school that gave as challenging an academic experience as Jefferson's to a student body that was 100 percent low-income?"