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"The head of the state Democratic Party on Monday attacked a Republican lawmaker's bill that seeks to cut cash benefits for parents on welfare whose children don't attend or do poorly in school. Chairman Roy Herron said the bill, sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, would be named Starve the Children' and denounced the measure as perhaps the worst bill yet from the radical Republicans.'"

"Iowa House lawmakers voted Monday to expand a tax credit for Iowans who give money for scholarships for low-income children to attend private schools. The School Tuition Organization Tax Credit has been around since 2006, and currently offers a maximum of $8.75 million in tax credits for scholarship donors."

"Rep. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, added an unexpected provision to her sweeping education accountability bill Thursday: a pitch to free Florida school districts from having to provide private tutoring services at low-income schools."

"Lack of economic diversity among students in some Sanford area elementary schools is pushing the Seminole School Board to consider taking a stronger role in deciding who attends which school. That could include setting a specific percentage of low-income students for each of the five schools on the west side of town and assigning students to meet that percentage, based on whether the children qualify for government subsidized lunches."

Commentary: Andrew Wainer, Bread for the World Institute

"Rollins students make up more than half of the adult mentoring force at Fern Creek, spending at least one hour a week with their designated child. The college also has helped develop a science lab at the elementary school, resurrected an arts club, taught a robotics class, painted classrooms, worked on landscaping projects, directed a theater production and donated more than 1,000 books to the school's library."

"David Brown, the executive director of Grace Scholars, an SSO that serves 900 students in the Augusta area and 17,000 in Georgia, said he hopes the new transparency encourages more individuals and businesses to donate to a child's private education. Like GOAL, Grace already targets low-income families and publishes its financial data to the public voluntarily. However, he has seen evidence of abuses when donors call his office to ask whether they can contribute to their own child at a particular school and then receive a tax credit."

"If enacted, the measures promise to have a particularly pernicious effect on students from low-income families without college-educated parents. The National Council of La Raza and the Education Trust, advocates for poor and minority students, have labeled the proposed changes a retreat from progress' that would take Texas back to the bad old days of pervasive tracking.'"

"With support and guidance from Students Rising Above, a local nonprofit, these Bay Area youth are now in college. But for many low-income and minority students who have had suffered trauma as children, financial aid and good grades aren't the biggest challenges. College means they can escape their situation, but it also means leaving behind siblings, friends and family who are still stuck in cycles of violence, drugs and poverty."

"More alarming is the rising number of young people who have dropped out of the system. Regionally, 14,000 youths ages 16-19 are not in school or working. Over their lifetime, they will cost us an estimated $13 billion in lost earnings, lower tax revenue and higher social service spending. What's harder to cost out is the lost potential of a young person who lacks the skills to get a career-track job, failing to break free of the poverty cycle."

"Florida school districts typically have used teacher recommendations and then an IQ test to identify gifted children. But teachers as gatekeepers' are problematic, Ford said, because most teachers aren't trained to spot gifted kids and often overlook the poor, minorities and those still learning English, as they don't fit their notion of the very bright. In Ford's view, traditional IQ tests also are biased against those groups, exacerbating the problem."

"One of this year's worst pieces of legislation would cut state welfare benefits to a family if a child doesn't do well in school. The theory is that cutting benefits to a poor family will cause parents to take greater responsibility for their child's education. This unfortunate piece of legislation is nave in its supposition, ill advised in targeting children, uninformed about the causes of underperforming students and insensitive to its potential consequences. We urge lawmakers to remove it from consideration."