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"These teachers know that under such a system, they will rank lower if they spend time teaching ideas that, while important to students, aren't included on the crucial test. They will rank lower if they accept the challenge of teaching troubled children or working in a high-poverty area where students' academic performance is suppressed by fewer opportunities to learn outside school."

"On a chilly morning, some 20 low-income parents convened on the city's Southwest Side to hear a presentation on how reading to their children enhances brain development and school readiness. Hardly unusual -- except most of the prospective "students" were all younger than 6 months."

"After high school graduation, when he turned 18 and was too old to live in a foster home, Macias knew exactly where he was headed: the streets. 'There weren't a lot of options with no money and no job, I was pretty sure I'd be homeless,' he says. But before he could pack his duffel bag, Macias received some happy news. A foster care worker told him about the Utah Youth Mentor Project, a program that matches teens who have aged out of state care with volunteers who provide friendship, advice and help with everything from finding an apartment to balancing a checkbook. "

"Georgia added a fourth category, 'alert' schools, to make sure it could offer assistance to schools that, unlike those with the priority, focus or reward designation, may not receive federal Title 1 assistance given to schools with a high percentage of low-income students."

"If passed, the measure would establish a pilot program to give $10,000 annual bonuses and other incentives to highly rated teachers who transfer to high-needs schools, where at least 75 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the schools indicator of poverty, and where fewer than 40 percent of students are proficient in math and reading."

"When Head Start was launched in 1964 as a piece of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, Bill Ferzacca traveled as a national consultant, informing people about how the new federal law would help disadvantaged children get better prepared for kindergarten."

"'If all our neighborhoods were racially and economically integrated, it'd certainly be more convenient to have a system based on neighborhood schools,' said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the editor of the new book."

"A new dual language class, iPads for third-graders and an initiative aimed at boosting learning for children in poverty are all coming to Bruce Drysdale Elementary School, but school board members have stopped short of merging the school with its higher-performing neighbor."

"Early language and literacy skills are powerful predictors of a child's future success in school. Abundant research exists that attests to the challenges faced by children who enter kindergarten lacking basic early literacy skills. These skills are developed when adults read to children regularly beginning at birth."

"When officials in Frederick County, Maryland voted last year to stop paying for the local Head Start preschool program, they pointed to a nearly $12 million projected budget shortfall as proof that the mostly rural county could no longer afford it."

"The measure would have allowed Arizona schools to opt out of the National School Lunch Program, which offers low-income pupils free or reduced-price lunches at most public schools. Charter schools and private schools are exempt from the federal program."

"A bill that would allow Arizona schools to opt out of a federal program that subsidizes lunches for poor children proved too much of a lightning rod for its sponsor, who requested the measure be shelved for the session."