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"Federal officials have opened the door for Wake County to reintroduce students' family income as a basis for school assignments. U.S. Department of Agriculture attorneys say Wake can use data on students who receive subsidized lunches to balance schools by family income as long as the process doesn't result in the identification of individual students."

"Hawaii's governor this week signed a bill that expands the state's existing Preschool Open Doors program to fund subsidies for 900 children. The more than $7 million package is seen as a step toward eventually providing state-funded public preschool, but is less than half of what Gov. Neil Abercrombie originally proposed. Thousands of kids will lose services when the state's junior kindergarten program for late-born 4-year-olds expires in mid-2015."

"Federal officials have opened the door for Wake County to reintroduce students' family income as a basis for school assignments. U.S. Department of Agriculture attorneys say Wake can use data on students who receive subsidized lunches to balance schools by family income as long as the process doesn't result in the identification of individual students."

"As Virginia's Board of Education begins to develop a formula for calculating letter grades for each of its public schools by fall 2014, superintendents across the state are getting nervous. The A to F scale, which was approved by the General Assembly earlier this year, is intended to give parents an easy-to-understand summary of the varying quality of each of the state's schools. But school leaders are worried that the measures will be more of a reflection of how many poor students they serve."

"The Hamilton Project, a Washington group affiliated with the Brookings Institution, has released a report calling for the expansion of a recent experiment aimed at persuading highly qualified low-income students to apply to top colleges. Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country's 238 most selective colleges in a recent year, according to research conducted by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard. Among top students in the highest income quartile, the figure was 78 percent."

"The rising cost of college looms like an insurmountable obstacle for many low-income Americans hoping to get a higher education. The notion of a college education becoming a financial albatross around the neck of the nation's youth is a growing meme across the culture. Some education experts now advise high school graduates that a college education may not be such a good investment after all."

"The University of Missouri-Kansas City, which was once among the more costly public universities for low-income students, has created a new grant program to help those students pay for their education."

"Signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 at the same time as Medicare and Medicaid, the OAA provides federal funding for essential senior services like job training, caregiver support, transportation, preventative healthcare, meals and protection from abuse and financial exploitation. Funding for the legislation has failed to keep pace with inflation and population growth for decades. Under sequestration, an additional $40 million will be cut from senior meal programs alone, which means that as many as 19 million fewer meals will be available to seniors who need them."

"A trio of utility assistance plans for Oxnard's poorest residents, with costs ranging from $200,000 to $2 million a year, will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday night. The slimmest proposal would subsidize utility bills for qualifying seniors at an estimated annual cost of $200,000. Up to 663 households could qualify for the recommended $25 monthly discount, staff members think. The discount would be available for low-income households led by someone 65 or older."

"Our poverty problem is getting worse, not better. According to a 2013 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, about one in five public schools was considered high poverty in 2011meaning that 75 percent or more of their enrolled students qualified for free or reduced-price lunchup from about to one in eight in 2000.'"

"Gray said that the sequester cuts in some cases are more significant in rural areas where families might have to travel forty miles one way' than in a larger metropolitan city, where two or three blocks away there might be another option.' Rural America often gets overlooked. We know Kansas is referred to as a Flyover State',' said Gray. But there are a lot of people here, and a lot of people in poverty.'"

"The financial penalties that Medicare imposes on hospitals with high rates of patient readmissions are too harsh for hospitals serving the poor and should be changed, according to a congressional advisory agency."