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"Starting next fall, Public School 133 in Park Slope will set aside 30% of its coveted kindergarten seats for kids who are living in poverty or are struggling to learn English. The local school board voted to approve the admissions scheme this week after dozens of meetings with parents, education officials and school administrators."

"That's according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which for the first time Thursday reported vocabulary scores pulled out from the reading tests given to fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders nationwide. Which is troubling, experts say, since vocabulary is essential to reading comprehension, and poverty keeps rising in Illinois. More than half the state's 1.95 million schoolchildren qualified for free or reduced lunch in 2012."

"Spring Lake Elementary is overcrowded, but Sabal Point, Wekiva, Forest City and Bear Lake elementary schools have excess student desks. Sabal Point, which is farthest from Spring Lake, has the most room. The rezoning plans developed by the committee must balance the percentage of low-income students at each school."

"As many as 6,000 children and their families are entitled to free lunches, waived fees, school supplies and other financial help, but aren't receiving it, according to school district estimates. Many of them don't fit the traditional picture of homelessness -- living outside, in parks or beneath overpasses -- but some do. Under an energetic new leader, the former principal of Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts, the Homeless Education Assistance Resource Team is trying to find these children -- and then help make sure they graduate."

"The McKinney-Vento Act, the primary federal legislation on education of homeless children, requires districts to provide transportation to displaced students who live within 50 miles of district boundaries. It also provides free lunch. The overnight growth in the homeless population has generated all sorts of questions,' said Gary Bixhorn, chief operating officer for Eastern Suffolk BOCES. A few districts are used to dealing with a few kids. It is now many districts that are dealing with an enormous population.'"

"The Waukee City Council on Monday approved the final reading of a zoning change that paves the way for a developer to build a low-income senior apartment complex in Waukee."

"Gov. Dannel P. Malloy Wednesday pledged to continue his support of education reforms in general and early childhood slots in particular at a groundbreaking of a center in Fair Haven Heights that will expand accredited preschool options for low- income children."

"We must have facts, both to make the right decision and, if expanding school is the right decision, to defuse arguments against doing it. So it's important news that 40 schools in five states, including New York, will add 300 instructional hours per year in a study to design more effective schools. The program, a collaboration between the Ford Foundation, the federal government and the states and districts involved, was designed by the National Center on Time & Learning, a nonprofit that seeks to expand learning time. The schools involved face high poverty, the area in which education is most clearly failing."

"The most important consideration should be the effect of a voucher program on Tennessee's most vulnerable students. The task force rightly reached a consensus that any program should target only low-income students. A bill that broadens eligibility to include students from financially stable families should be rejected."

"In fact, federal data released last week shows that Minnesota ranked dead last in four-year graduation rates for Latino and American Indian students, second to last for African American students, and near the bottom for low-income students overall. That's the case even though an estimated 500 related educational initiatives spend about $90 million annually in the metro area, mostly on top of school district budgets."

"Essentially what happened over the course of the recession is that the face of poverty sort of changed.' said Jeanette Batiste, chief operating officer for Foodlink. People were coming into hardship that had never experienced that level of hardship before.' Experts and educators don't expect the rise in students facing economic hardship to level off any time soon, creating new challenges for schools as their populations change. When students are experiencing stress at home, their academics could suffer, or they may act out. And students may need basic services from schools that they didn't need before, like coats or take-home snacks."

"Amid a major school-choice overhaul that targets uneven achievement across its schools, next fall the district is designating some city areas as high-need' using an uncommon combination of family income, test scores and English fluency. It will reserve seats for children from those areas in 10 schools with the lowest portion of low-income students, including six with perennial waiting lists."