By The Editors
Amid the surprising display last month of productive bipartisan cooperation between the Obama administration and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, there was one glaring failure: The Senate rejected the DREAM Act, legislation which proposed to grant citizenship at the end of a ten-year period to children of undocumented immigrants who successfully earned post-secondary degrees or entered military service.

By Lee A. Daniels
Data accumulating in a growing pile of reports map the devastating consequences of the Great Recession on millions of Americans.

Among the most recent is a study from The Urban Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, full of alarming statistics and findings about the “threat” to America’s social fabric of the persistence of child poverty.

By TaRessa Stovall
The 12-year-old Bronx resident may be shy and soft-spoken, but his fierce drive and unwavering confidence are earning him celebrity status in a sport not often associated with urban youth. He earns top grades, loves math, obeys his parents, avoids junk food and oh yeah, is the youngest black chess player ever to reach the level of master.

In the world.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
It’s not a new phenomenon – children being raised primarily by their grandparents or other close relatives. About six million are, according to the Kinship Care Legal Research Center, an initiative of the American Bar Association.

By The Editors
For more than a quarter-century, there’s been an intense national discussion about the crisis in educating black boys in the nation’s public schools.

In the meantime, despite numerous successes of programs in individual public, private and charter schools, and scattered community efforts, the crisis has only gotten worse.

By Tarice L. S. Gray
Families are where children find acceptance, which is key to healthy growth and development.

By Stacey Patton
When school begins this Wednesday, 267 of Biloxi’s top-performing elementary students will be attending a new school less than a mile down the road. But some parents and city residents feel that move will threaten the student’s continued high scholastic achievement.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
While at a swim meet two weeks ago in Canada, World Record Holder and 2008 US Olympic Swimmer Cullen Jones got some heartbreaking news: Another child of color had drowned in his United States.

By Stacey Patton This past Wednesday, New York Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy stood at the U.S. Capitol holding up a long wooden paddle as she introduced the “Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act” – a bill that would ban corporal punishment in all public and private schools that receive federal assistance.

By Stacey Patton
Good news in the battle against corporal punishment in schools! But not everyone, especially some in Houston’s black community, agrees.