Latest Coverage

"Like most school systems that serve disadvantaged children, New Haven, an urban district with a high poverty rate, has faced enormous challenges in improving the quality of instruction."

"As recent statistics show increasing poverty in Milwaukee, Barrett said, 'I remain convinced that education, and access to education, and access to books, is one of the best things we can do to combat that. We're trying to foster a positive learning environment.'"

"One columnist's idea of a good principal: A good principal has been a teacher.While Ivy Leaguers in their 20s can now become principals, Jacqui Getz, 51, the new principal of Public School 126, a high-poverty school in Chinatown, came up the old way."

"That percentage could be substantially higher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves a large number of low-income minority students attending campuses with poor test scores and high dropout rates."

"New data released today from the U.S. Census Bureau show a surprising dip in the estimated number of St. Cloud residents living in poverty last year, but a sharp increase in poor children and seniors. The results of the 2010 American Community Survey show an estimated 23.8 percent of people in St. Cloud had an annual income in the past year below the poverty line."

"Similarly, 22 percent of the admissions officials at four-year institutions said the financial downturn had led them to pay more attention in their decision to applicants' ability to pay."

"More of the children attending schools in metro Detroit are living in poverty, a trend pronounced not just in urban areas but also in some of the tri-county's wealthier areas. Between 2006 and 2010 -- a period marked by a recession that rocked Michigan more than most states -- 19 school districts in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties saw increases of more than 100% in the number of poor children."

"Each designation requires schools to take some level of action. Schools in need of improvement that receive federal funding for low-income students must offer students tutoring and the chance to transfer to a better-performing school."

"Many illegal immigrant parents work long hours in low-wage jobs, sometimes more than one job. New research on very young children cited in the Harvard study showed that the undocumented parents' difficult work conditions ''contribute substantially to the lower cognitive skills of children in their families.'"

"Researchers have linked not reading over the summer to achievement gaps between low-income students and their wealthier peers. But studies indicate "reading loss" doesn't affect just those students."

"Local efforts to get top educators into struggling high-poverty schools, provide extra aid for the neediest students, and identify and reward the most effective teachers caught the attention of the panel of judges and data-crunchers who selected the winner."

"The decline has led some commentators to embrace demographic determinism -- the idea that the verbal scores of disadvantaged students will not significantly rise until we overcome poverty. But that explanation does not account for the huge drop in verbal scores across socioeconomic groups in the 1970s."