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"Through a program to boost Michigan's college graduation rate, Comstock High School is getting a full-time adviser to help students navigate the college admissions and financial aid process. Laura Essig is part of the National College Advising Corps, a program in which recent college graduates are hired, trained and placed as full-time college advisers in high-poverty high schools."

"Children who are considered homeless often have physical, social and academic problems, and in time the truth comes out. What is unfortunate is that they could have been helped early on if only school officials had been aware of the circumstances. There is help for many families in these situations, if they ask. Getting children connected to services that can help them is imperative, and school officials could use some help."

"The state announced yesterday the five health plans that have been selected to serve as many as 115,000 low-income seniors in Ohio enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare."

"The two connected through Idealistic Mentors,' a pilot program of College Possible, which Daynom began as a junior. College Possible, a St. Paul-based nonprofit that also operates in Milwaukee and Omaha, tries to make college a reality for low-income students through an intensive curriculum of coaching and support,' its website states. The organization rolled out the mentorship program to 100 seniors at Columbia Heights, Coon Rapids and Highland Park high schools last year."

"Work on the long-planned Franklin Field senior housing complex, which will add low-income housing for senior citizens in the Waveland Park neighborhood, is expected to begin by fall."

"South Carolina has a tuition tax-credit program that lets children attend schools that are right for them. Who is eligible for the tax credit? Anyone who donates to the privately funded scholarships that have been set up for low-income and special-needs students. The program gives tax deductions of up to $4,000 to families to help cover the cost of sending their children to private schools, $2,000 for home schooling and $1,000 to help with expenses related to sending their children to out-of-district public schools."

"Capital One has given a $50,000 grant to Girls Inc. of Metropolitan Dallas to help more than 800 girls ages 6 to 18 develop financial literacy, reading competence and college readiness skills through Girls Inc.'s after-school and summer programs. The contribution is part of a continuing investment in the nonprofit's mission to prepare its members, 80 percent of whom live below the poverty line, to take charge of their daily lives through effective skills and enrichment programs."

"About 13,000 of these low-income elders in San Francisco get help from federal and local government housing programs, either living in subsidized units or using special low-income vouchers to meet the rent. And nearly half of low-income seniors get government-subsidized In Home Supportive Services to help with cleaning, bathing and the like. But that still means there are thousands of San Francisco's poor elderly getting by somehow on their own - and according to the city's periodic homeless count, only about 500 of those are on the streets. This means a lot of seniors are finding alternatives such as moving in with relatives, receiving family financial help to live in assisted-living facilities or simply aging, off the radar, in whatever homes they've had for decades."

"U.S. schools where fewer than 25 percent are impoverished (by the same lunch measure) beat all 34 of the relatively affluent countries studied except South Korea and Finland. U.S. schools where 25 to 50 percent of students were poor still beat most other countries. These results are from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment, a widely followed effort to compare educational outcomes. PISA scores inspire a good deal of hand-wringing in this country - overall, we were 14th in reading - but I suspect we've been taking away the wrong message by not adjusting for poverty."

"Sauk Rapids-Rice has boosted its efforts by working more closely with city and county organizations as well as programs geared toward assisting homeless families. We've really made an effort to increase our awareness of that population,' Bittman said."

"Not only is our education system being starved of investment, but many of our children are literally too hungry to learn. A survey of kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers released this week by Share Our Strength, a nonprofit that seeks to end child hunger, found that 6 in 10 of those teachers say students regularly come to school hungry because they are not getting enough to eat at home,' and a majority of teachers who see hunger as a problem believe that the problem is growing.'"

"Virginia's new policy is anything but subtle. For example, under the new rules, schools are expected to have 78 percent of white students and 89 percent of Asian students passing Virginia's Standards of Learning math tests but just 57 percent of black students, 65 percent of Hispanic students and 59 percent of low-income students."