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"Part of the challenge for low-income students is that they lack of information about college admissions. For example, low-income students may assume that they cannot afford to attend highly selective universities farther from home. But the data show that less selective colleges often offer less financial aid. Counter intuitive as it may be, the out-of-pocket costs and loans required to attend a top university can be substantially lower than the costs for attending a less academically competitive institution."

"Wichita schools have set a record that no parent or teacher wants to see. As of midday Monday, educators and social workers had identified 2,251 homeless children attending Wichita schools this year."

"More than a quarter of Kentucky seniors - 27 percent, federal figures show - have had all their natural teeth extracted, ahead of only West Virginia and Tennessee. And 53 percent of Kentucky adults have had at least one permanent tooth pulled. A shrinking number of dentists across the state take Medicaid, and more than half of Kentucky adults have no dental insurance. Waits at some safety-net clinics can stretch to half a year, and a mobile dental service run by Louisville's health department recently stopped when its dentist left."

"A new scholarship program at Wilmington University aims to help academically qualified homeless students from Delaware's public school districts. The university will provide $1,000 each academic year to supplement the financial aid of the students, who can use the money for books, supplies and other necessities."

"It's a tough trade-off that has education reformers looking hard at the traditional school schedule, experimenting with ways to expand available learning time to better match learning needs, especially for low-income students whose families can't provide the enrichment activities middle-class kids benefit from during after-school hours."

"As in other rankings, schools serving poorer students that did earn a top grade tended to be magnet schools or schools of choice. But neighborhood elementary schools with high poverty rates did perform better than secondary schools with similar populations in the survey."

"Since we began in 2005, 98percent of our scholars have graduated from four-year colleges within six years, compared with only 11percent of low-income, first-generation students nationally, according to a 2008 Pell study. Our scholars exemplify how earlier intervention, personal advising and academic support are essential to finding, gaining admittance to and succeeding in a best-fit college."

"Silvernail has led research on the topic of how schools can succeed despite poverty in the community or loss of funds. He said he viewed LePage's grading system as flawed because it didn't take into account funding levels, not that he thinks any school should be excused from excellence on that basis. Instead, he said measuring a school's efficiency, rather than just test scores and student achievement, would be more indicative of a school's performance."

"Sufficient funding is required so that all parents, including low-income parents, have access to high-quality programs for their children from birth to age 5. This means that we must sufficiently fund the Child Care Subsidy Program, which uses designated federal and state funds to help low-income parents pay for child care as they strive to enter and remain in the work force."

"The department says the goal is to provide a tool parents and community members can use to hold schools accountable for explaining academic performance, but that is already happening. The result is more likely to be that schools, largely from lower-income areas, are simply shamed. The grading system was not created with buy-in from districts."

"As the mosquito-borne West Nile virus makes its return to North Texas this spring, free insect repellent is being offered to low-income senior citizens in Dallas County."

"A child's destiny should not be determined by her zip code. Massachusetts has been a leader in public education reform for nearly two decades, but persistent poverty- and race-based achievement gaps in low-income communities are reminders that we have not done enough to meet our commitment to offer educational opportunity to every young person in the Commonwealth. These inequalities persist under our watch despite clear policy options that work but are not available in every community where they are needed."