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"Unfortunately, the vast majority of high-achieving, low-income students do not apply to selective colleges or universities. The average enrollment of low-income students at the more selective four-year colleges is only in the 10 to 15 percent range. Well-qualified low-income students who are discouraged from applying to selective colleges and who enroll in less selective schools are at a disadvantage. Less competitive schools generally offer less generous financial packages, fewer support services and less challenging courses of study."

"Inequality has been increasing in multiple ways. But one little-appreciated form is the inequality of retirement time. That's the number of years between retirement and death. It's not surprising that divergent retirement time should reflect other forms of growing inequality. The poor have lower earnings and often work longer out of necessity, not choice. They are less likely to have decent pensions or private savings. On average, they suffer poorer health and tend to die younger. On all counts, the affluent get to enjoy more years of retirement in relative comfort."

"Those are just some of the unique learning opportunities students at the high-poverty school are getting this year as part of an extended-day program. The school district, in partnership with the nonprofit Charleston Promise Neighborhood, piloted an extended school day at Sanders Clyde this school year, with students staying an extra 2 hours a day."

"Jasmine Miller, who grew up in Tennessee and graduated from Harvard in 2013, has some illustrative anecdotes to explain how low-income students at elite colleges get subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that they aren't like their classmates. An Ivy League economics professor, for example, might try to elicit a discussion by asking, 'How many of you were raised by nannies?' And a low-income student is bound to get a party icebreaker like 'Where's your favorite place to go abroad?'"

"First-generation and low-income students thrive at small and midsize private colleges and are more likely to graduate than if they attended a public or large private university, a report by the group representing those institutions says."

"Midway Independent School District's board of trustees Tuesday unanimously approved a letter stating that it does not support a proposed low-income housing development near Woodgate Intermediate School, claiming the complex, coupled with a new D.R. Horton subdivision in the same attendance zone, could strain the district's resources."

"The state treasurer is proposing lowering sales and property tax rates and creating a state income tax to pay for education. The legislature was ordered by the state supreme court to come up with a plan by the end of the current legislative session to fully fund K-12 education as mandated by the state constitution."

"Somerset County is one of the best places in the state for children, according to the latest annual Kids Count report released Monday. For the second year in a row, Somerset County was ranked No. 3 in the report, which measures the state's 21 counties in 13 categories, including poverty, health, safety and education. Nearby Morris and Hunterdon counties finished ahead of Somerset."

"Teenagers drop out of high school for all sorts of reasons: lack of motivation, little support from parents, poor academic performance. But for some low-income students, the decision to leave is purely economic. Many are going to work so they can make money to help their families."

"Kids on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder typically end up with less educational material to work with and subsequently fall behind once they start school. A new study, however, has found a common smartphone app may help parents bring their kids back up to to speed at least when it comes to reading."

"A new study led by researchers at MIT and Harvard University offers another dimension to this so-called 'achievement gap': After imaging the brains of high- and low-income students, they found that the higher-income students had thicker brain cortex in areas associated with visual perception and knowledge accumulation. Furthermore, these differences also correlated with one measure of academic achievementperformance on standardized tests."

"The borrowers struggling the most to pay off their student debt are exactly the people that student loans are designed to help. Regardless of whether they left school in 2005, 2007 or 2009, low-income borrowers were more likely than their wealthier counterparts to default or be at least 120 days delinquent on their payments within five years of graduation, according to data released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."