Latest Coverage

"The popular Kenner Discovery Health Sciences Academy will finally get to expand, after an initial denial and months of tweaked efforts to recruit more African-American and at-risk students. The Jefferson Parish School Board approved the move Wednesday. The charter school may enroll 90 more children for the 2015-16 academic year, adding seats in all grades except third, fourth and eighth. Starting in 2016-17, it may add high school grades."

"The poverty rate for school-age children increased during and after the Great Recession in nearly a third of counties, according to new statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau's Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program. Poverty among children age 5 to 17 increased in 928 counties between 2007 and 2013, the research shows. It declined in 15 counties."

"According to new Census data out today, poverty rates for school-aged children in 2013 were still above their 2007 levels in nearly a third of all counties, many of them clustered around metro areas in California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina."

"Reading Partners now operates in eight states, including California, where 9 out of every 10 fourth-graders from low-income families are reading below grade level. Unless something is done to help them step up to reading proficiency, they are four times less likely than proficient readers to graduate high school on time -- complicating their chances at going to college, and increasing the likelihood that they will have run-ins with the law, studies show."

"A developer of a $24 million assisted living complex for low-income seniors wants $1.4 million in tax breaks. The Plaza at Westchester is proposed for 75 Stratton St. South and it would consist of 158 units with living space for 200 residents."

"The American economy has stopped working the way it used to for millions of Americans. The path from poverty to the middle class has changed now, it runs through higher education. In 1965, a typical man whose education stopped after four years of high school earned a salary 15 percent higher than the median male worker. By 2012, a high-school-only grad was earning 20 percent less than the median. The swing has been even more dramatic for women who stopped their education after high school: They earned almost 40 percent more than the median female salary in 1965 and 24 percent less in 2012."

"A brand new after-school program focuses on homework and academic assistance. In October, Villa Maria College teamed with the Town of Cheektowaga to being an after-school services program for second graders from the Union East Elementary School and Mary Queen of Angels School. WBFO's Focus on Education reporter Eileen Buckley says the program is designed to support children from low-income families."

"MSU Federal Credit Union has partnered with the Telamon Farmworker Individual Development Account Program and the MSU College Assistance Migrant Program to assist migrant students with financial hardships as they complete a post-secondary education. The Telamon Farmworker IDA Program is designed to help low-income individuals create and maintain a savings account to help them develop money management skills and help decrease debts related to a post-secondary education."

"Grissom is among the almost half-million low-income elders and people with disabilities being initially enrolled in the state's new program, and many have been confused by CMC's complexities, leaving them uncertain of whether they will be able to remain with their current doctors and other health care providers. If successful, the state would expand the program to 1.1 million people in all 58 counties."

"A long-running complaint that requirements for Florida's Bright Futures scholarships discriminated against minority high school graduates was closed by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights last week, which says it found "no evidence of intentional discrimination." What it did find "statistically significant disparities, by race, even among otherwise qualified applicants" should still get lawmakers' attention in a state with a rapidly expanding Hispanic population and where African-American students have been less likely in recent years to enroll in state universities."