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"While supporters herald the plan as a way to help level the playing field for children who do not have the advantages of daily bedtime stories, music lessons and counting games at home, critics argue that providing universal preschool could result in federal money being squandered on ineffective programs."

"Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union, announced Wednesday morning that he has introduced federal legislation that would give tax credits to help prepare our children for the jobs of tomorrow.' The bill, titled the Educational Opportunities Act, would, among other things, amend the federal tax code to allow taxpayers to receive credits of up to $4,500 to cover tuition and other education-related expenses for children attending nonpublic schools. The Rubio measure, his first during the new congressional session, represents a new frontier in federal school reform and is geared specifically toward low-income families."

"And President Obama is trying, against great odds, to do something for 4-year-olds. People, think about this for a minute. We have no bigger crisis as a nation than the class barrier. We're near the bottom of the industrialized world when it comes to upward mobility. A child born to poor parents has a pathetic chance of growing up to be anything but poor. This isn't the way things were supposed to be in the United States. But here we are."

"Most other academic studies have also found early educational intervention fade out' and that these programs rarely achieve what they promise. Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution wrote Wednesday that the available studies supporting universal pre-K were thin empirical gruel.' Researchers at the Heritage Foundation and the conservative sociologist Charles Murray have come to similar conclusions. This is about as close to an intellectual policy consensus as Washington gets."

"President Obama's call for universal preschool in his State of the Union address underlines a national shift in thinking about early childhood education, driven by advances in neuroscience and a growing urgency about the need to close the achievement gap between poor and privileged children. A small but increasing number of states have invested tax dollars in preschool during the past decade, and millions of parents are walking their 3- and 4-year-old children into classrooms instead of keeping them at home or with a babysitter."

"The donation will be seed money for expanding a two-year-old food pantry program now in six Multnomah County low-income schools. The donation, and a challenge for other businesses to join the campaign, could grow the program to 24 more school-based food pantries in counties served by the Oregon Food Bank."

"Georgia's pre-kindergarten program will get a turn in the national spotlight this week when President Barack Obama uses Decatur as a backdrop to promote an education initiative to give low-income preschoolers an earlier start on their schooling."

"Wichita and several other major Kansas school districts fought a proposal Tuesday that would take poverty measures out of the school finance formula, focusing instead on test scores. Under Senate Bill 103, districts would no longer be able to count students beyond third grade as at risk' just because they qualify for free and reduced lunch."

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"The Obama administration last week gave Gov. Rick Scott one of the two waivers he's requested for managing Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the very poor. The waiver affects long-term care for 87,000 low-income seniors and disabled people who now receive nursing home or in-home care under Medicaid. Given that Medicaid consumes about $21 billion of the state's $74 billion budget and that long-term care accounts for about 18 percent of Medicaid's budget we all have a stake in the efficient management of the program's long-term care services for our most frail citizens."

"High-rise apartments can reinforce the sense of isolation that already threatens low-income elders. Add security guards and a management office that, like a school principal's, is located near the front door, and the greater neighborhood can seem remote. So some community advocates are trying to connect high-rise residents to their neighborhoods."

"In Texas, the achievement data about students who come from disadvantaged homes is not good. Evidence from the state's latest school finance lawsuit reveals that 47 percent of low-income ninth-graders failed at least one of their high school end-of-course exams last year - after three tries. Collectively, low-income ninth-graders failed 262,343 end-of-course exams last year - after three tries."