But attempts to bring in any sort of choice for poor parents have failed.
These would enable poor parents to choose their children's schools (including, controversially, private and religious schools) thus promoting competition to attract pupils.
In the most radical break with the party establishment so far, John Norquist, the mayor of Milwaukee, has thrown his weight behind a scheme that allows poor parents to send their children to private schools (see box).
As part of the government's emphasis on work, the working families tax credit, to be introduced in October, and the children's tax credit, due in 2001, will help poor working parents.
That makes sense because previous work has shown that skinny female zebra finches are less likely to survive and reproduce than skinny males so when resources are poor, parents should prefer to produce sons.
His parents were poor, and he helped to support them from a young age.
Parents in poor zones will be given the option of sending their children to schools in wealthier districts.
ECONOMIST: Has Wake County thrown out the baby with the bathwater?
Outsiders' money can distort the decisions of officials and parents in poor countries.
His family was poor, but his parents, Sarah and Andrew Parks, instilled in him the values of hard work and racial pride.
But he was such a poor student that his parents sent him to a strict boarding school, where the students were assigned cadet drills.
Parents in poor areas were offered the choice of transferring their children to wealthier schools, but capacity limits made many such requests impossible to grant.
ECONOMIST: Has Wake County thrown out the baby with the bathwater?
For those from poor families, whose parents had few academic achievements, who got into private school via the assisted-places scheme, the benefits were especially marked.
And research shows that when the incomes of poor families rise, parents spend the gains on improving the diets of their children through buying fresh fruit.
BBC: Poorer children more likely to be obese, says Anna Soubry
"For a poor family where the parents are suffering from addiction, giving them an extra pound in benefits might officially move them over the poverty line, " he will say.
Ocalan, 49, said late last year he had little sense of national identity until he was a teenager, but was struck by the powerlessness of his poor, illiterate farming parents.
Working fast, Vallas moved on to the toughest part of his job -- making public schools accountable for their results rather than blaming poor test scores on parents or society.
The idea of charges for university education (euphemistically known as top-up fees) strikes fear into the hearts of parents neither poor enough to benefit from state hand-outs nor rich enough not to feel the pinch of high tuition fees.
ECONOMIST: The battle-lines over university fees have been drawn
If a child is enslaved, it's because his parents are desperately poor.
British children brought up in two-parent families where only one parent works are almost three times more likely to be poor than children with two parents at work.
Household accidents were also disproportionately more likely to affect the poor with children with unemployed parents 37 times more likely to die in a fire than children in professional families.
Many parents today are too poor to send their children to school.
Studies have suggested that parents' judgement is poor regarding weight, with 75% underestimating the size of an overweight child and 50% failing to recognise that their child is obese.
Yet one fact not making news is that it is still the case that the highest marginal tax rates in America do not fall on the highest incomes, like Lefty, but on certain of the working poor, many of them single parents, who are being taxed at rates approaching 90% as they lose benefits attempting to better themselves.
Doctors can struggle to talk to parents who feel they are being accused of poor parenting, which is why healthcare professionals may need guidance in tackling the problem, especially when parents cannot see there is one.
Many jobs today do not offer health care coverage, and three out of four poor children are in families where the parents are working.
While it does appear to be true that most households receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP is the new name for food stamps) are out of the work force, a significant fraction do have earnings and most of the rest are poor elderly or disabled households or single parents with children.
There were even parents who accused Bennett of allowing poor behavior and language on the team bus, accusations that were proved false with the help of videotape.
But the culture in the US supports parents aggressively blaming teachers for the poor performance of students, and students end up feeling entitled to better grades for poor performance.
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