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"The 10-year-old federal law tracks the progress of entire student bodies and also how well individual schools and districts teach various subgroups of students, including those living in poverty, minority groups, and limited language and special education students."

"The AYP measurement takes into account subgroups, such as special education, low-income students and minorities, but performance in one area can make or break whether a school makes the mark."

"Federal law specifies how the discount, or rebate, is calculated under Medicaid, the program for low-income people. The minimum rebate for a brand-name drug was increased last year to 23 percent of the average price that manufacturers receive for sales of the product to retail pharmacies."

"The economic slowdown has hurt the ability of middle-income Californians to pay for long-term care insurance or save for their own needs. At the same time, the sluggish economy has led the state to roll back programs that help low-income people live as independently as possible."

"Yet, as in years past, the achievement gap put a damper on the good news, with scores of English learners as well as African American, Latino and students from low-income families lagging well behind their peers."

"So far that turnaround has been questionable. Last week Marshall and Mead were back on a list of high-poverty schools identified as 'on improvement' by the state because they have not met test targets for two years in a row."

A new survey by the SCAN Foundation and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, however, finds that Californians are woefully underprepared for the cost of such services. The survey is a wake-up call to the public, as well as a warning sign to lawmakers who want to pull the plug preemptively on a new federal insurance program for long-term care.

"'If it's not, I'm not going to support it. I have a problem with setting aside any seats for achievement,' he continued. 'It's substituting achievement for race, or economics.' And if relying on proximity results in high concentrations of low-income students, how would the system deal with that?"

"In an average week, Classroom Central gives away 71,000 pencils and pens to teachers working with low-income students. That's 10,142 a day, 422 an hour, or seven a minute. And it's still not enough."

"California has the nation's second-highest unemployment rate, with more than 2 million jobless workers, yet many employers still can't fill job openings that require technical or mechanical skills."

"Nearly 43,000 low-income seniors and people with disabilities are finding themselves in similar straits as they learn they no longer qualify for Illinois Cares Rx, a popular program whose funding was slashed in half, to $53.7 million from $107.4 million, in the new state budget."

"In an interview before the march, Nantambu cited some examples of racism, including the closings of about a dozen schools with high minority populations and the use of Teach for America teachers in high-poverty schools."