When I was 16, I poured different amounts of baking soda into a couple of half-open ketchup containers to see what would happen. The resulting reactions were fascinating. The baking soda reacted with the vinegar in the ketchup to produce carbon dioxide. The pressure built up inside the containers, then...

This week, Lawyers for former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall proclaimed her innocence of charges leveled against her by the Fulton County District Attorney. This proclamation came after details of test cheating scandals in Atlanta, Georgia and accusations of teaching scandals by former schools chancellor of Washington DC,...

I am a writer, science advocate and education researcher, but at my core I am a New York City hip-hop kid. My life has been shaped by many beautiful moments in hip-hop culture and I've been inspired by the complex ways in which hip-hip navigates the world. New York has...

The first day I heard about the mass shooting of Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin I was moved to write a piece detailing the range of emotions I felt as the details of the shooting emerged. As reports described the religious background of the worshippers, the history of the gunman and...

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit in a room with two brilliant scientists. One is hip-hop icon GZA who has had an outstanding career as a solo artist, but is probably best known as a member of the iconic Wu-Tang Clan. The other, is world renowned...

In his most recent comments about education in the United States, and in a sampling of the rhetoric that will soon come from both parties as the presidential debates loom over the horizon, republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pronounced that inequity in education is "the civil rights issue...

Last year, the whole world came to a standstill as people from across the globe connected via social media, voiced their collective frustrations with their oppressive everyday experiences, confronted old regimes and sprung into action to topple powerful and seemingly indestructible age-old political structures.

In Egypt, millions of protesters...

On February 26th 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy who was returning to his family's home in Florida from a visit to a store, was gunned down in cold blood by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain in a gated community in Florida. Trayvon Martin was a Black young man...

The seemingly meteoric rise to stardom of New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin has become the subject of news stories, the theme of conversations among millions of basketball enthusiasts, and captured the imaginations of youth in classrooms across the United States. The Asian American basketball player, after stints in the...

The dismal conditions of the nation's public schools, along with the low rankings of U.S. students compared to their peers across the globe, have awakened the general public to be more engaged in the state of education in America. The media has in turn been sensationalizing the...

The new movie, Red Tails, tells the story of the first African-American military aviators in the United States armed forces. The movie describes the overwhelming adversity that African Americans endured in the United States Military and provides insight into the unfounded perceptions of the intellectual capabilities of people of color....

News of the "slavery math problems" assigned to 8-year-olds in Gwinnett County, Georgia, a few days ago, has left the entire country in disbelief. Parents, educators and the general public are wondering how any qualified teacher could have posed these questions. I am perturbed by the fact that...

Earlier this month, a Forbes contributor posted an article entitled "If I Were a Poor Black Kid" on Forbes.com. The post was written by a white middle class man, who offered a bevy of suggestions for "poor black kids" that he himself would take if he were...

A few days ago, the New York State Civil Liberties Union released a report that raised attention to the racial disparities of NYC school arrests. In the first report of its kind, focusing on summer school months, the report mentions that the NYPD arrested and gave summonses to more than...

Over the course of the last year everyone from economists to politicians have begun to discuss a concern that educational researchers have seen on the horizon for decades: the low numbers of youth who are engaged in the sciences and the need for increased attention to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering...

Less than a month after the death of Jamey Rodemeyer, a teenager from Buffalo, NY who committed suicide after being bullied by classmates, the nation has once again become re-awakened to the fact that this issue, which flooded the media a year ago with the death of Rutgers...

The classroom and the boardroom are often seen as dissimilar spaces. In classrooms, there are students and teachers; two groups of people that have the most insight on the current debate about what to do with the broken education system, but whom have rarely been invited to engage in the...

For hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, the world seemed to come to a standstill when the news was released that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles had turned a deaf ear to pleas for clemency for Troy Davis. Hundreds of thousands of supporters, who range in...

For parents across the country, the end of summer marks much more than cooler weather and light jackets. As you begin to trade long summer days for cool fall mornings, the biggest thing on your mind is the new school year. As you make this transition, you are being bombarded...

Recently there were reported shootings and fights at stores, break in's and shoot-outs at malls, and even reports about the alleged death of a young man over the release of Air Jordan 11 Concord sneakers. In response to the release of these sneakers, urban communities have...