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"Pell Grants were just one of many programs to help low-income people that were to be cut under HR 1. According to the National Organization for Women, the bill also proposed cutting, among other things, the health care reform act passed last year; teen pregnancy prevention grants..."

"Last week a House committee voted to restore Washington, D.C.'s opportunity scholarship program, which lets kids in persistently failing schools attend a private school of the family's choosing."

"Families living in poverty continuously cope with immense and complex problems largely on their own - challenges as basic as keeping food on the table, preventing utilities from being turned off and making the next rent payment."

"Stripped to its basics, the battle to reform public education in low-income communities is a struggle against isolation."

"About 41 percent of schoolchildren in Fond du Lac qualify for free or reduced-price meals - an indicator of poverty levels in the community. Superintendent Jim Sebert said 3,000 out of 7,300 students are eligible for subsidized meals."

"Cash Michaels is hammering the Wake County school board for not planning for the costs of high-poverty neighborhood schools, and he's warning that the budget cuts in Charlotte could be a sign of things to come locally."

"Teaching is incredibly hard, especially when dealing with children in high-poverty communities who come to school with enormous challenges."

"Those numbers raise questions about who's getting the district's best and worst teachers, based on the new measure. They're likely to rattle parents' perceptions. For instance: Wilson Middle, a long-struggling high-poverty school, is rated near the top for teacher effectiveness."

"Over the years, many programs have aimed to ease poverty's grip on Washington's Parkside-Kenilworth Community, and each has failed. Now the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative, basing its ambitious effort on the cradle-to-college model of Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone, is hoping to break that pattern."

"More than 218,000 of America's most vulnerable children may soon lose access to a vital program that significantly increases their chances for success in school... Head Start, one of America's best-researched and most effective social programs, is once again under attack."

"A basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession."

"I take them at their word and wish them Godspeed. But though I have no ax to grind against them, the FMAE's modest ($500 each for five needy students) scholarship does serve as a fascinating sign of our times."