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It’s spring break time in South Jersey, and in the tonier towns such as Haddonfield and Moorestown last week, the streets were eerily quiet. Families with school-age kids left the premises for warmer climes, including Florida, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Two middle school girls were heard conversing. “We go to Disney at least once a year,” said one. “Well, we can only afford to go every other year,” said the other, with a note of shame in her voice. [For more of this story, written by Rebecca H.

[For more of this 10 part comic series, go to http://www.upworthy.com/the-harsh-reality-of-being-a-black-child-in-america-told-in-a-10-part-comic?c=upw1]

I can remember watching the popular girls in my elementary school bully another student, I’ll call her Megan, because they thought she was “weird.” They would say rude things to her all day, making fun of her hair, her drawings, the way she spoke. And Megan would just sit there silently through it all, not even looking at them. She’d keep doing her homework, drawing, playing. Sadly, the other kids and I didn’t make any effort to help her, lest the mean girls turned their sights on us. Megan...

Tracking, the practice of putting a small group of higher achieving students into separate advanced or honors classes, isn’t popular with progressive educators. Previous research has pointed out that it exacerbates inequality in our schools because higher income and white or Asian kids are more likely to get tracked into the elite classrooms. Students who aren’t chosen can become demoralized, or the curriculum in the average class can get too watered down. Great teachers and extra resources...

Concentrated poverty is arguably the biggest problem U.S. cities face today—and it’s only getting bigger. The number of American poor living in depressed neighborhoods—those with at least 40 percent of residents below poverty line—has been on the rise since the 1990s . And according to a new analysis of Census data by the Brookings Institution, the recession further accelerated this upward trend. [For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to ...

Colleges should be doing more to recruit low-income students and to support them as they work to finish their degrees, says a new report released by the Department of Education. The report also shines a light on the successes some colleges have had in promoting greater access to low-income students and increasing graduation rates. "Many colleges and universities have taken important steps to make college a reality for low income students, but unfortunately today those success stories are the...

RICHMOND, Calif. — The odds were good that Lonnie Holmes, 21, would be the next person to kill or be killed in this working-class suburb north of San Francisco. Four of his cousins had died in shootings. He was a passenger in a car involved in a drive-by shooting, police said. And he was arrested for carrying a loaded gun. But when Holmes was released from prison last year, officials in this city offered something unusual to try to keep him alive: money. They began paying Holmes as much as...

Tucked in remarks the president made Tuesday on the opioid epidemic was his announcement of a new task force on mental health parity — aimed at ensuring that people with mental illnesses and substance abuse problems don’t face discrimination in the health care system. Despite a landmark 2008 law intended to do just that, enforcement has been paltry, and advocates say discrimination has continued. “The goal of the task force is to essentially develop a set of tools, guidelines, mechanisms so...

Sometimes a photo can express more than words ever can. That’s especially true when it comes to mental health conditions, which are challenging to explain to those who don’t understand what it’s like to experience them. Despite the fact that these disorders bring about crippling physical and emotional symptoms, the illnesses often are “invisible” to the naked eye — and that can perpetuate negative stereotypes that someone’s suffering is “all in their head.” Enter these stunning photos,...

Solitary confinement is a practice that has been used in the U.S. prison system since 1829. It is based on a Quaker belief that prisoners isolated in stone cells with only a Bible use the time to repent, pray and find introspection. In other words, it would give the individual the opportunity to learn a lesson from the experience. By 1890, reports showed that many of the inmates went insane, committed suicide or were no longer able to function in society. When I was incarcerated in the Iowa...

Years before anyone had heard of ACEs, Brenda Jones Harden was a social worker in the child welfare system. She worked with children who had spent their lives in foster care, children whose parents died young from drugs or disease or street violence. “I thought: Here are the children who are the most vulnerable. Not only are they poor, not only do they have educational problems, but they have been traumatized. It made me want to devote the rest of my career to these children.” Brenda began...

One of the first pieces of advice I received as a new mother was to never let my baby use me as a pacifier. I took this advice to heart, resolving to keep my daughter on an ironclad feeding schedule: once every two hours, 20 minutes on each side, so regular that I may as well have asked her to punch in and out at each shift. Even with these strict self-imposed limits, breastfeeding was more of a commitment than I had anticipated. For the next few weeks I barely left the house so that I could...