Education and Poverty News
"Limited research on this calendar shows some positive impact on test scores, particularly for low-income elementary students. In Chicago, year-round students last year posted slightly better gains on test scores than did students in schools on the regular calendar."
"One option, Hayes said, might be to tailor money to districts' needs. For instance, fast-growing districts could get extra dollars to keep up with the influx of students. Also, students from low-income backgrounds could bring more money than more affluent students."
"The University of Great Falls received a nearly $1.5 million five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to provide specialized counseling and tutoring to students from low-income families [and] students who are the first in their family to attend college..."
""Every time we open a new Title I school, they open with a parenting center," she said.
A school typically qualifies for Title I status if at least 40 percent of its students come from low-income families as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau."
"Most of the other schools on the 'in improvement' list are in step two or three this year, which means it's their second year or third year on the list. They are required to continue the work from step one and offer supplemental services to low-income students, usually in the form of tutoring."
"Citizen Schools has been around since 1995, providing mostly after-school programs for low-income students at 37 school sites across the country. In Boston, the nonprofit offered an extended school day similar to the programs starting in Oakland, doubling proficiency rates..."
"New Academy Canoga Park opened in 2005 as an unusual example of public-private collaboration using school bonds and other funding sources to combine a new school with low-income housing."
"The state learned this week that it was awarded $697 million in federal Race to the Top money, but it can't be used for hiring teachers. Half of that will be used for statewide initiatives. Most of the other half will go to districts with high poverty rates."
"About half of the money from Race to the Top, which is aimed at spurring education reform and innovation, will fund statewide efforts, and most of the rest will go to school districts with high poverty rates."
"For years, the majority of high-performing black and Hispanic middle school students in Wake County have been shut out of advanced math classes that would put them on track for top-flight colleges."
"The D.C. mayoral race is deeply split on most issues, but everyone agrees on one thing: We must reduce the achievement gap between minority and white students. It is too bad, then, that the gap is such a mindless measure of school progress."
"But while plenty of that money may have been spent superfluously, it also appears to have played an important role in funding college educations, particularly for lower income families, according to Cornell University economist Michael Lovenheim."
"Low-income college students who rely on New Jersey's popular Tuition Aid Grant program to help pay their tuition bills will see their aid checks slashed by nearly 8 percent as they return to campus for the new school year, state officials said."
"In June, Vantaja, 17, graduated from Malverne High School. She is an honors graduate, a scholarship recipient, and this week she is due to become a freshman at Nassau Community College. Until February, she was homeless."
"Randolph High dropped fees and restored junior-varsity sports after a $5.48 million override passed in April 2008, and Brockton officials say fees would create hardship for the 64 percent of the students at the high school who are classified as low-income."
"The district could not afford to forgo the grant money, said Burlington schools superintendent Jeanne Collins. Nor could Wheeler - a school with many recently arrived refugees from Africa and other parts of the world, many students from deep poverty, and notably low test scores."
"Test scores as a whole have risen rapidly, but some schools are performing abysmally, with others comprising a vast middle group, improving but still struggling to teach basic reading and math to low-income students who came in three, four, even five grade levels behind."
"Those were the images of local poverty that businessman Doug Pitt couldn't shake. The result with early pledges of help from Brad Pitt, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation and businessman Jim D. Morris was Care to Learn."
"The federal government has awarded a total of $1 million over five years to Santa Fe Community College to help low-income and first-generation students and students with disabilities finish their education."
"For homeless students living at the Missouri Hotel, access to computers often ended with the school day. There was nowhere close to complete online assignments, play educational games or look up a topic discussed in class."
"According to the federal government, among Washington’s low-income black eighth-graders, only 8 percent have achieved eighth-grade math proficiency. Among the state’s nonpoor white students, about half meet this standard."
"Meadowlane is one of only eight schools in Alabama recognized by the state Department of Education as a school where high poverty has not translated into low achievement."
"I don't see it. I am particularly uncomfortable with any plan that lets 14-year-old ninth-graders choose a vocational track, as used to happen with low-income kids."
"City colleges, or junior colleges, as they were once known, were not always a way station for students who were behind in reading and math. The average student in junior college used to be a kid from a working-class or impoverished family who had to work..."
"Although the college graduation rate of Bridges students is better than the national average of about 40 percent for students from low-income families, the gift should help increase their chances of success, Swartz said."
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