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"New research... finds that the most disadvantaged applicants (those who... are black, attend public schools with high poverty rates, come from low-income families and have parents who are high school dropouts) score, on average, 784 points lower on the SAT..."

"On average, low-income children fall between two and three months behind in reading skills over the summer while their middle-income peers stagnate or make very slight gains, said Ron Fairchild, chief executive officer of the Baltimore-based National Summer Learning Association..."

"Medicare, which pays for the skyrocketing cost of health care for seniors, will be a much harder nut to crack. Fix Social Security first, and it will be a little bit easier."

"Sidney dropped out of school in seventh grade and spent the next few years homeless. When she returned to school at the age of 16, she was placed into the 10th grade, even though she had had no education for three years."

"The Supplemental Security Income and State Supplementary Payment program also is threatened. Carlson said it 'serves as the foundation for the ability of low-income senior citizens to survive.'"

"Another found that schools need 40 percent more funding to meet California's achievement goals for schools. Schools with large numbers of low-income children need vastly more funding than schools that serve the middle class to achieve the same results, the studies found."

"They are a month into a strike that has crippled an 11-campus system with more than 62,000 students, intent on persuading the administration to revoke austerity measures that they believe will unfairly hamper low-income students."

"That challenge becomes more daunting the higher the level of poverty school districts have. The average fourth-grade reading score for Cleveland public schools, with 100 percent of students listed as low-income, is 194."

"New York City's fourth graders are doing significantly better in reading since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the schools, but eighth graders have shown little improvement, according to the results of a national reading test released on Thursday."

"Thursday's report focused on the performance of urban students, who often have more in common, including the number of students who come from low-income families."

"Despite the advances, the 44,500-student system continues to trail far behind schools in the suburbs, other big cities and the nation. It faces huge challenges to further improvement related to poverty in many parts of the nation's capital and troubles within its schools."

"The prevailing view is that such neighborhoods are a black hole of poverty, ignorance, crime and hopelessness. No one can escape. High school graduation rates average below 40 percent. And only one in 40 urban African-American boys finish college."