Reprinted from Newsweek
September 23, 2008

Who wants more poor children around the world to go to school? Raise your hand. Yep, everyone's hand is up. Education is the ultimate mom-and-apple-pie (or rice-and-beans) issue. Everyone's for it. But our best efforts to get more impoverished kids into schools aren't always effective. Despite some recent progress in China and India, 73 million children worldwide don't go to primary school. Three times as many never go to secondary school. Though they can sometimes be trained later in life, their shortened time in school is often a major impediment to advancement. These kids are mostly doomed to a life of poverty, and so are their families.