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"Rather than asking individuals to increase their value, we need to transform how we as a society value the work individuals do. Recently when President Obama admonished corporate CEOs to stop complaining about regulations, he roused a sharp retort from the corporate world, accusing him of "not getting it" and not doing enough to remove uncertainties caused by regulations that discourage companies from hiring."

"The topic of poverty was examined through group discussion and analysis Thursday afternoon in the Gordon Parks Museum at Fort Scott Community College. About 30 people attended a free workshop entitled 'Bridges out of Poverty' inside the Danny and Willa Ellis Family Fine Arts Center to learn more about the hidden rules of poverty, middle class and wealth in order to have a better understanding of the driving forces behind the three socioeconomic classes."

"The U.S. Department of Education has given the University of Alabama at Birmingham a $47 million grant for the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, which aims to increase the rate of low-income high school students who are prepared to enter a level of higher education."

"As selective colleges try to increase economic diversity among their undergraduates, the University of Chicago announced Wednesday that it's embarking on an unusual effort to enroll more low-income students, including the elimination of loans in its aid packages. What's more, the elite school will no longer expect financial-aid students to hold jobs during the school year and application fees will be waived for families seeking aid. The initiative includes scholarships, career guidance and a guarantee of paid summer internships, officials said as they announced the No Barriers program. The university will offer more than 100 workshops across the nation to demystify the admissions and financial aid process."

"With the deadline for high school seniors to enroll in Gov. Bill Haslam's first-in-the-nation offer of a free two-year postsecondary education now one month away, a report by 24/7 Wall Street shows how urgent and absolutely essential Tennessee Promise is to the state."

"New state ratings reveal that dozens of Minneapolis and St. Paul schools are among the lowest-performing schools in Minnesota and are failing to close the achievement gap between white and minority students. Statewide, education officials identified 155 struggling schools. The ratings signal which schools are performing poorly and which are beating the odds among those that accept federal poverty money."

"Research from Rice University academics Todd Risley and Betty Hart found that, by age 3, children from low-income families hear, on average, 30 million fewer words than their peers growing up in more affluent homes. This word gap - and related social and emotional skill deficits - become the achievement gap when children born into poverty enter kindergarten at a severe disadvantage and never catch up. Substandard urban K-12 public education perpetuates this tragedy, increasing the risk of dropping out - the surest way to ensure that a child fails to join society's mainstream as an adult."

"With elite colleges under growing pressure to enroll more low-income students, the University of Chicago is taking a series of rare steps to make applying faster, simpler and cheaper, and to make studying there more affordable. The package of measures, to be announced Wednesday, includes several that are highly unusual, like eliminating the expectation that low- and middle-income students take jobs during the academic year, guaranteeing them paid summer internships after their first year in college and providing them career counseling beginning in that first year."

"Gov. Gary Herbert isn't ready yet to announce a final deal has been reached with the federal government on his Healthy Utah alternative to Medicaid expansion, even though he's holding his annual health summit today. The governor will only be able to provide an update on the ongoing negotiations with the Obama administration in his opening address today to the fourth annual gathering to discuss health care reform."

"When Gov. John Kasich bucked his party to accept the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in Ohio, the fight wasn't over. In a fraught political maneuver in 2013, the Ohio Controlling Board voted to accept about $2.6 billion from the federal government over 18 months to expand eligibility to low-income single adults and more parents."

"A year ago, hospitals worried that they'd lose money and have to cut staff or expenses because of the Affordable Care Act. The full results are not in yet, but in some areas, hospitals report seeing gains, not losses. For President Barack Obama's administration, these gains, largely from hospitals seeing more patients who have health insurance, are part of the ACA's good-news story."

"Under the program, nonprofit organizations can collect donations from businesses to fund scholarships that would move low-income children from public schools with low test scores to private schools. The businesses would receive a tax credit that subtracts 70 percent of the amount they donated off their bill for state corporate income tax, privilege tax (for financial institutions) or premium tax (for insurance companies)."