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"Administrators previously were reluctant to open AP courses at schools such as Wakefield High in Arlington County, where 48 percent of students are low income and presumably don't have the support of college-educated parents. "

"New Jersey's Supreme Court has found in rulings over the past two decades that urban schools were underfunded and ordered the government to fund the most impoverished districts as well as its most affluent suburban schools."

"'They rely on very-low income students to attend their schools, but they don't adequately prepare students to be financially stable,' she said. 'They are not preparing them to have jobs that will let them pay off their loans.'"

"...But like any big-city district, it faces problems. Dozens of schools in the city's urban belt have poverty levels of 75 percent or higher; many of those have low test scores and struggle to recruit and keep strong faculty."

"'The students and families who would suffer the most are low-income and middle-income families,' Halter said.'The very-low-income student may not have sufficient financing to go to school after a lottery scholarship and Pell grant.'"

"Instead of inspiring kids to succeed, our schools only inspire them to drop out. And when they do, they're significantly more likely to go to prison or wind up in poverty."

"Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is about to make a lot of new friends: The 26-year-old tycoon is pouring $100 million of his staggering fortune into Newark's blighted school system after hitting it off with the mayor of the poverty-stricken city."

"Chicago Public Schools will expand its effort to link an educator's compensation to student achievement with a $35.9 million federal grant that will allow the district to reward principals, teachers and classroom aides in schools dogged by poverty, officials announced Thursday."

"'It is wrong to take money from food stamps to finance child nutrition programs,' said Edward M. Cooney,... 'You are taking money from low-income people in one program and spending it on low-income people -- maybe the same people -- in another program.'"

"About 85,000 Ohio students are eligible for Ohio Educational Choice scholarships, which pay tuition for students transferring from low-performing public schools to private schools."

"'Newark for a long time has been a city with enormous promise but with a public school system that by and large fails many of the kids,' said Kevin Ryan, who worked with Newark Public Schools for about 14 years and is currently president and CEO of New York-based Covenant House for homeless and runaway youth."

"They don't include the homeless, who number anywhere from half a million to three million. Nor do they count most doubled-up families experts say they're up by at least 11 percent. And then there's those young adults returning home who at other times would be living [alone]..."