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"Citing high levels of fraud and abuse in the school lunch program, Gov. Chris Christie yesterday launched a task force to examine how school aid is distributed in New Jersey."

"The AARP report, which examined the retail prices of the 514 brand name and generic drugs most widely used by Medicare recipients, said that the price of generic drugs fell by nearly 31 percent from 2005 to 2009. But at the same time that brand-name drug prices grew by nearly 41 percent and specialty drugs rose more than 48 percent."

"The fractious debate over how much schools can counteract poverty's impact on children is far from settled, but a recently published collection of research strongly suggests that until policymakers and educators confront deepening economic and social disparities, poor children will increasingly miss out on finding a path to upward social mobility."

"Cleveland, to jeers and cheers, last week denied the presence of extreme poverty in North Carolina and said that statistics showing it are merely manipulated by the government for political benefit. His comments coincided with the NAACP's statewide poverty tour - the Rev. William Barber invited me to come with him and meet some Vietnam vets sleeping under bridges in Fayetteville - and the N.C. Community Action Association's push to publicize its own 'Face-to-Face with Poverty' initiative."

"Previous rounds of budget reductions have already eroded these programs, the advocates said. The number of children from low-income working families who attend city-subsidized child care has dropped by more than 9,000 since 2009, from 51,712 to 42,215. A"

"The letter shifts into pure fiction, audaciously blaming the low ratings on the school's "huge financial cuts" and wrongly stating that richer schools were spared from the belt-tightening."

"The boy is one of about 26 students from Richland's Marcus Whitman Elementary School receiving tutoring and breakfast twice a week at nearby West Side Church. As he munched on cereal and a granola bar, the second-grader said he didn't get much help on schoolwork from his parents."

"About a dozen students showed up to work at the site of a new Samaritan House, which will quadruple the size of the existing homeless shelter run by Carson-Newman College's auxiliary ministry, Appalachian Outreach."

"The District has embarked on two major structural education reforms: creation of one of the largest public charter school sectors in the nation, and a mayoral takeover of D.C. Public Schools. Yet little attention has been paid to the financing needed to make these ambitious makeovers successful."

"Columbia University looked at federal aid data from 1996 to 2008 and found that, on average, colleges raised tuition $17 in response to every $100 of Pell Grant aid. Perversely, Pell Grant generosity spurs schools to raise prices to capture aid. The less affordable a school, the likelier a low-income applicant will qualify."

"The elderly, who have traditionally relied on spouses for their care, will increasingly struggle to fend for themselves. And federal and local governments will have to shoulder much of the cost of their care. Unmarried baby boomers are five times more likely to live in poverty than their married counterparts, statistics show."

"Utah high school students and their families would have to pay for college-level credits, long offered for free, under a bill headed to the Senate floor.SB284 is needed because Utah colleges and universities can no longer afford to provide concurrent enrollment instruction for free, according to sponsor Sen. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George. "