Florida

"Low-income schools traditionally have been a training ground for novice teachers and a depository for ineffective ones. A string of ineffective teachers is a deal killer for disadvantaged students who get little enrichment at home and can rarely make up the lost ground."

"Campus administration plans to phase out Help One Person Excel scholarships, a program that has assisted more than 1,500 Edison State students since its introduction in 1993. Recipients are predominantly low-income, minority, first-generation college students."

"County commissioners Tuesday cut a series of federally supported community service programs that feed impoverished seniors and bus children to Head Start centers. The sequester cuts $1.9 million in grants for those programs, leaving seniors without breakfast, poor children without rides and bus drivers without jobs."

"Homeless people can receive free tuition at Florida public colleges - and State Rep. John Tobia thinks this little-known legal loophole is a poor use of tax dollars that could be exploited by couch-surfing' students."

"The widening gap in life expectancy between these two adjacent Florida counties reflects perhaps the starkest outcome of the nation's growing economic inequality: Even as the nation's life expectancy has marched steadily upward, reaching 78.5 years in 2009, a growing body of research shows that those gains are going mostly to those at the upper end of the income ladder."

"Under Amendment 11, approved by Florida voters last November, low-income seniors who have lived in their homes at least 25 years can seek the additional property-tax exemption."