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"Teachers may be the biggest in-school factor, but there are many out-of-school factors that weigh heavily on performance, like growing child poverty, hunger, homelessness, home and neighborhood instability, adult role-modeling and parental pressure and expectations."

"Starting Thursday, 80,000 low-income seniors became the only older Chicagoans still eligible for a free ride. (Free rides for the disabled and military personnel also continue). Another 375,000 seniors who were riding for free get a reduced rate."

"The 700-student school serving grades K-12 has a nearly 90 percent poverty rate. Many families can't afford or don't have access to eye care services, which can hurt a child academically."

"The Regional Transportation Authority also mailed more than 80,000 Circuit Ride Free cards to low-income seniors. The cards will enable seniors eligible under the state's Circuit Breaker program to continue riding public transit without paying fares."

"'This is really about getting at the root causes of poverty in the elderly,' said Cathy Mutschler, vice president of community engagement for the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region."

"Most schools with high numbers of impoverished students are still struggling to meet academic targets. Fifty-one of 123 local schools deemed as 'high poverty' under federal standards received D's or F's on this year's state report cards. Last year, 54 schools received those marks, which the state labels as 'academic watch' and 'academic emergency,' respectively."

"Most at risk were blacks, Hispanics, and people in the South, according to AARP.And from 2007 to 2009, the biggest increase was seen among those whose incomes were more than twice the federal poverty level."

"Mount Olive required parents to pay $200 per student and had signed up two out of every three eligible students, including some from low-income families whose fees were covered by the district, when classes resumed in 2010. Parsippany also cut courtesy busing for elementary school students in 2010."

"Tacoma students followed state up-and-down trends in most categories, with some exceptions. Tacoma students who register some of the highest poverty rates among school districts in Western Washington lag state scores in all categories."

"The DCOSP budget went up, too, from $13.2 million to $20 million.Low-income students in elementary grades will receive scholarships worth $8,000. For high school students, it will be $12,000. There's still a long way to go, of course. School choice isn't as widely available as it should be, and teachers' unions continue to fight it at every step."

"How should we handle instruction, curricula, discipline, parent involvement, hiring and firing? How much power should the principal have? What assessments should be used? Here are two suggestions from me. They are very different but appear to be working well with low-income public school children."

"In ''Class Warfare,'' the problem is not the poverty the children experience, the violence they see in their homes and neighborhoods or the lack of vocabulary that the sons and daughters of adults who did not finish high school often take with them to kindergarten. The villains of Mr. Brill's story are bad teachers coddled by unions."