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"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]..."

"A Hollywood commissioner is calling for a federal inquiry into whether the Broward School District discriminates against low-income children by keeping them out of two Montessori magnet schools."

"The Senate has approved the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which sets new nutritional standards... It would also expand the number of low-income children eligible for free or reduced-priced school meals"

"'If the program goes away, I will lose everything,' she said Tuesday, while she and others visited lawmakers in hopes of winning a last-minute reprieve. 'I won't be able to work, I won't be able to afford day care, I don't have family support here, and I'll lose my home. Connie is my support.'"

"'Children of the privileged are being educated to interrogate reality,' Kozol said at the Council for Children's Rights annual meeting. 'Children of poverty are being educated to spit up regurgitated answers.'"

"The federal "Promise Grants" are an anti-poverty and education-reform initiative in one, an approach many experts applaud but also say is expensive, with goals that are difficult to achieve."