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"Children are admitted to Bright Beginnings, which does not charge tuition, based on skill screenings; those most likely to lag in kindergarten get first priority for seats. Most come from low-income homes, and some have parents who speak little English."

"Nearly half of the state's 2.1 million public school children came from families who were considered low-income during the last school year, as the recession nudged more families toward poverty."

"School officials acknowledge that low-income students are under-represented in honors and AP classes. Students of color are also under-represented, if not almost entirely absent."

"The Community Action Council of Howard County, which helps low-income residents of the affluent jurisdiction, is on track to see about 2,000 people ages 45-plus this fiscal year - up 50 percent from a year earlier."

"A bill introduced this week in the General Assembly would establish the most expansive publicly funded school voucher program in the nation. The program could allow thousands of Hoosiers across the state to receive at least some state aid to apply toward private school tuition."

"The reason for the gathering, which included historian John Hope Franklin and civil rights matriarch Dorothy Height, was to address growing rates of poverty among black children."

"`I don't know how he's getting these numbers,' Carnevale said of Sum's calculation. `He shows that lots and lots of people have college degrees and low wages, and he refuses to send his data so we can check it.'"

"In a report issued last month, the Center on Education Policy studied more than 40 states to find out how long it will take to close the achievement gaps that exist between low-income and students of color and their highest achieving counterparts at their current pace."

"The case came down to socioeconomic equality, said Michelle Fine, a social psychologist at City University of New York... 'We have policies that have distributed pain and burden in a way that low-income schools have for generations paid a price,' she said."

"Poor children who eat breakfast at school for free will have to pay 30 cents a meal for the last few months of this school year after Republicans on the legislature's Joint Budget Committee refused to provide additional funding for the growing program."

"The bonus system was planned as a pilot program several years ago with the support of the teachers' union, which required that the money be given to schools as a whole, rather than to individual staff members. Only high-poverty schools can qualify..."

"The proposal would require wholesalers to pay the 'dime per drink' tax on all of their liquor sales upfront and then pass along the cost to retailers and restaurants, which presumably would pass it along to consumers per drink."