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"The $32 billion Pell Grant program is the U.S. government's main financial aid for low-income students, benefiting more than one in three undergraduates, or about 10 million total nationwide. Recipients can get up to $5,730 a year. Other area schools with high numbers of Pell-eligible and thus low-income students included Cedar Crest College (43 percent) in Allentown, Penn State Lehigh Valley (36 percent) in Center Valley and Moravian College (30 percent) in Bethlehem, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education."

"Poverty makes it harder for children to succeed in school. And every day, tens of thousands of D.C. schoolchildren walk into a classroom with a heavy weight on their shoulders. That's because children in poverty are more likely to be hungry or malnourished, exposed to trauma, stress or violence, affected by family or neighborhood turmoil or faced with severe health problems."

"A new nationwide survey of parents shows the District has the highest afterschool participation rate in the United States. On the other hand, DC is 49th in the percentage of low-income children enrolled."

"Low-income children now outnumber middle-class students in Illinois public schools. More than a million kids qualified for free or reduced price lunch last year."

"The Children's Scholarship Fund Philadelphia announced Thursday that 2,000 new, four-year scholarships were available to help low-income city families send their children to nonpublic schools for kindergarten through eighth grade. The scholarships begin with the 2015-16 academic year. Established in 1998, Children's Scholarship Fund Philadelphia now provides financial aid to 4,500 city children at 185 nonpublic schools."

"A new study found state budget cuts to public universities nationwide have deterred many low- and middle-income students from attending college. The Center for American Progress found that 38 states cut the amount of spending per student during the fiscal period of 2008 to 2012, said Elizabeth Baylor, associate director of postsecondary education at the center. The two- and four-year college attendance rate of low-income students dropped from 55.9 percent in 2008 to 50.9 percent in 2012. The state has cut universities' funds by about 5 percent, according to the study."

"High school seniors are set to participate in College Application Day. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education says the event Tuesday tries to increase the number of first-generation and low-income students pursuing a college degree or other post-secondary credentials."

"Bloomberg Philanthropies is leading a coalition of organizations that aims to raise the number of top-performing students from lower-income families who attend colleges with six-year graduation rates of at least 70%."

"Some Washington, D.C., children are denied participation in the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which gives students from low-income families scholarships to attend private schools, despite a law that gives students with siblings in the program preference."

"Young people from low-income families, and first-generation college students, are not necessarily the same as minority students. But like minority students, they are less prevalent on campuses than their wealthier counterparts from well-educated families and they are rare at the nation's most elite universities, such as the University of Michigan."

"On Tuesday, a handful of institutions will announce an ambitious new effort on this front. Led by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the coalition is setting a specific goal for which it can be held accountable. Today, only about one in three top-performing students from the bottom half of the income distribution attends a college with a high six-year graduation rate (at least 70 percent). Within five years, the Bloomberg coalition wants to raise that to one in every two students."

"In 1947, the Truman Commission on Higher Education recognized this vital role and prompted the federal government to begin making investments in public colleges to make postsecondary education more accessible and affordable to all students. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a number of the commission's recommendations were adopted; the additional investment paid off, resulting in significant increases in the share of high school graduates going to college."