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"To reduce the burden of those loans, Eggers founded nonprofit ScholarMatch in 2010. He took inspiration from crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, envisioning a website where donors would be able to read students' stories and support them financially. The organization has made good on that promise. By this fall, it will have paid out nearly $1 million in scholarships."

"The gap in academic achievement among 37 Northeast Pennsylvania school districts widened. Just two school districts outperformed 35 others across Northeast Pennsylvania in Times-Shamrock Newspapers' 15th annual analysis of academic performance. Last year, four stood above the rest."

"Minnesota is taking aim at social and institutional forces that put the least-experienced and least-qualified teachers in the state's neediest schools. Majority-white schools in Minnesota have half as many nontenured teachers as schools with large numbers of black, Asian, Hispanic or American Indian students, according to the Department of Education. Low-income, low-performing and especially charter schools also have high percentages of early-career teachers and those who are not fully licensed."

"This week, the GE Foundation released a solutions-driven white paper, titled 'The Skills Gap and the New Economy: Implications for Low-Income Students,' that outlines strategic steps needed to help low-income students succeed in college and career. According to the white paper, 'Right now millions of young people are struggling to find good jobs and to launch successful careers, while thousands of companies are unable to expand and innovate because they cannot fill critical positions.'"

"A federal program for the country's neediest college students is witnessing a troubling trend: an influx of students with fewer resources to pay for school. In its latest report on the Pell Grant program, the Education Department said nearly three-quarters of the 8.6 million students who received the federal grant to attend college last year reported having no savings or other cash on hand. That compares to 60 percent of federal grant recipients five years earlier."

"With few school lunches easily accessible during the summer season, a number of non-profits across the U.S. are providing more meals for low-income children. The Barry Farm Recreation Center is one of many hosting sites across the country. As a venue with an open site policy, meals at the center can go to any kids under the age of 18 who want them."

Most households in the United States find retirement planning a daunting challenge, with good reason.

" Under a new state metric to determine whether public school students are economically disadvantaged, far fewer Massachusetts students will be counted as living in poverty, according to state data. For years Massachusetts has used students' eligibility for free or reduced lunch to measure if students qualified as "low-income." Now, Massachusetts will scrap that method and instead deem students "economically disadvantaged" only if the student participates in one or more specific state-administered social welfare programs: food stamps, foster care, medicaid or transitional assistance for families with dependent children."

"On Monday, the Lumina Foundation came out with a guidebook of strategies for college administrators to improve financial support and completion success for low-income students. Titled 'Beyond Financial Aid,' the publication presents six key strategies to better serve disadvantaged students and highlights promising approaches being used by colleges and universities."

"A new analysis of a decade of state testing data by the Daily Herald and WBEZ reveals that a school's low-income level is a frustratingly accurate predictor of achievement. The results are clear. Schools with the fewest low-income students score the highest on average."

"Massachusetts has scrapped a decades-old method for defining low-income students in public schools, resulting in a dramatic decline in the number considered to be living in poverty, according to a Globe review of state data. Now, less than half of Boston school students are regarded as being from impoverished homes, compared with the previous figure of about three-quarters."

"A Pennsylvania state commission has proposed a funding formula that would send more tax dollars to school districts that serve high numbers of needy children, including those who are poor or who are learning English as a second language. Advocates welcomed the commission's unanimous recommendations as a first step toward fixing Pennsylvania's school funding system, which is the most inequitable in the nation, according to federal data."