Latest Coverage

"The committee wrestled with balancing enrollments while also considering demographic makeup of the schools. But committee members balked at equalizing the percentage of students from low-income families at each school, saying too many students would have to be shifted to equalize the extremes of 77 percent poverty at Spring Lake versus 21 percent at Sabal Point. All of the recommended plans maintain that divide and even increased the percentage of low-income students at Spring Lake."

"New Mexico ranked No. 1 for feeding low-income children breakfast at school, according to a new report. It is the first time the rankings have come out since the state's Breakfast After the Bell' law took effect, which requires high poverty elementary schools to serve breakfast in the first minutes of class."

"The school is taking steps to address that problem. The gymnasium at Bucyrus Secondary School was bustling with activity Monday as teachers and other professionals in the community learned what it is like for a child to live in poverty. Because of an anonymous donation from a Bucyrus community member, district Superintendent Kevin Kimmel set up The Community Action Poverty Simulation training for middle- and high-school teachers and other professionals in the community."

"Local governments now can offer an additional homestead exemption to qualified low-income seniors age 65 and older who have, for at least 25 years, owned their permanent residence that is now worth less than $250,000. In order to take effect in 2013, local governments had to approve the exemption by last Friday. But in a 4-1 vote, Dunedin city commissioners rejected the exemption for now, saying they want to gather more information during summer budget talks on how the tax break would impact city revenues."

"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."