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"U.S. schools might not be as bad as previously thought compared with other countries across the globe - but are arguably leaving upper-class students behind. Two Bay Area researchers analyzed data from international standardized tests over the last decade and have concluded the average scores skew against the United States, which tests more low-income students than other countries, especially those clustered in high-poverty schools."

"Providing extra funds for districts with more disadvantaged students is of course a fine thing to do in theory, but don't forget: If one group is to get more of the pie, another group has to get less. So Brown's plan could harm other districts that, although not quite as impoverished, are far from affluent. Such schools are struggling financially, and under Brown's proposal, they would fall even further behind."

"In the month since the Iowa City Community School Board passed a first reading of its proposed diversity policy, controversy about the document has swirled. The policy is meant to eliminate vast disparities in poverty rates across the district, which range from 6 percent in one school to 79 percent in another, by establishing ranges between which a school's poverty rate would have to fall. While many community members say something should be done about socioeconomic disparities and the academic gaps they create, stakeholders have disagreed fiercely about whether the current proposal is the appropriate way to do that."

"Paying for college has become too big a burden for too many families. Lower-priced community colleges have been a viable alternative, but with new, stricter guidelines for federal financial aid, even those schools are becoming out of reach for some students. Across the region, local community college officials are blaming changes in the requirements to receive federal Pell Grants for the decreases and flat enrollment they are seeing this year. Those changes include a lower income cap to become eligible for a grant, fewer semesters of eligibility, and no more summer grants."

"As the executive director of the Iowa Business and Education Roundtable has said, if across-nation comparisons of school performance were normalized for poverty, the U.S. would do as well in educational outcomes as Finland famously does. This begs the question: Wouldn't a war on poverty (or attention to home social support) be more important factors for improving educational outcomes?"

"One study of the Harvard initiative's first year found that the number of students whose family income fell below the threshold increased by only about 15 students in a class of about 1,650 freshmen. Officials at Harvard and other colleges with similar offers lament that there is not a large enough pool of high-achieving low-income students and that there's not much colleges can do to change that."

"More than 300 of Virginia's best and brightest college graduates are on today's front lines of bringing quality education to disadvantaged students, teaching in hard-to-staff schools as part of the innovative Teach for America (TFA) program. That none of these teachers is in a classroom in the commonwealth is due to the state's antiquated mode of teacher certification."

"A state agency wants $2 million more for loans to attract aspiring teachers to work in South Carolina's neediest schools. But, as more state schools are deemed needy, some education officials are asking whether the teachers who get the state loans are going to the schools that need them most."

"The state offered a one-time chunk of money to counties to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables for low-income seniors instead of using a voucher system that has not worked well in the past."

"Low-income Wayne County residents age 60 and older who qualify can receive a free monthly box of supplemental food by pre-registering at one of two sessions this coming week. The Richmond Senior Community Center, in partnership with Gleaners Community Food Program, RSVP and the Area 9 In-Home & Community Services Agency, is starting this month to offer the Community Supplemental Food Program that serves low-income seniors."

"If the Iowa City Community School District passes the proposed plan to diversify schools, it will join more than 80 districts across the nation that have responded to research on student achievement by giving more students the chance to attend mixed-income schools. Research shows that while students' own socioeconomic backgrounds have a big effect on their achievement, so do the socioeconomic backgrounds of their peers. Numerous sources - including the famous 1966 Coleman Report, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and a 2010 meta-analysis by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte - show that poor students at mixed-income schools do better than poor students at high-poverty schools."

"This entire testing mania came about because children from poverty were not succeeding in school as well as middle-class children. So, without research or analysis, politicians decided that the problem was teachers. They decided that if we test the children and publish the scores, it will shame teachers into doing a better job and prompt the public to demand better. For a decade now we have tried it, and it hasn't worked. The gap between kids from poverty and the middle class remains, but the aftermath has been disastrous."