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"School choice advocates, who believe the political winds are now in their favor, celebrated the reintroduction Monday of a bill that aims to provide scholarships to children from low-income families in poor-performing school districts."

"`A cycle of poverty is ensured if young people who are parents don't get through high school,' said Patricia Quinn, executive director for the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy. `A child born to a teen mother has a 27 percent chance of growing up in poverty.'"

"Currently, the state pays for universal preschool in the 31 poorest school districts and funds some low-income children in 116 districts. Then came the economic crisis and the state's preschool expansion was shelved."

"Doheny said that the number of homeless youths has taken a huge upturn over the past year and the agency is seeing kids from all over the state."

"Countless low-income districts already face chronic teacher shortages, and firing all the bad teachers would only compound the problem. As we seek to develop better teachers, we also must figure out how to get more teachers without sacrificing quality."

"They argued against ending the policy of keeping schools socioeconomically diverse, using busing in many cases, to avoid high concentrations of low-income students."

"Given a 52 percent budget cut in counseling and student services this year, the colleges can't always help them find their way to the financial aid... 'I think for low-income... students to access any services or classes in the system is really a challenge right now,' she said."

"[Michael Horwits, a social science teacher at Central] also asserted that Central is one of the most diverse schools: 32 percent black, 29 percent Asian, 30 percent white, and 7 percent Latino. Nearly 48 percent are low-income."

"Federal stimulus funding, which has supplemented special education and programs that serve low-income students, will drop off after next year, and contributions to the retirement account must begin to increase again."

"To be sure, Massachusetts school districts here have some important lessons to learn from other states, especially about bringing low-income and special needs students up to speed. But the problem is with the implementation ofstate standards, not the standards themselves."

"The annual report on student achievement... would also include where Massachusetts ranks among the 50 states on each measure when comparable data exists and shed light on how well the state's minority and low-income students are being educated..."

"That can result in disparities in how much schools spend per student. For example, in one school with 275 students and 91 percent poverty, the district spends $12,188 per pupil. In another school with 94 percent poverty and 504 students, it spends $9,899 per pupil."