Two days before Columbia University Teachers College's Campaign for Education Equity announced its new research papers on the topic of poverty as the key barrier to closing U.S. education gap - I got a personal taste of how children in this country get left behind despite the massive amounts of...

Scores and scores of newspapers, magazines and TV clips are featuring interviews of minority families beaming that Barack Obama's history-changing race to the White House will change their children's lives and careers.

Yes! And, sadly, no.

There is absolutely no question about it. In the days since the elections I've...

I guess I hadn't dared to truly hope - even just as the polls were closing on election night I wasn't a true believer.

Not the kind of hope that I saw at Tuesday night's Hutchinson Field rally where President-elect Barack Obama held court for only about 200,000 of his...

I've gotten asked this question only about a hundred times in the last few months:

"Why aren't you writing about Anita Alvarez? She's a smart, successful Latina, running for an important Chicago office - you should be all over this!"

Anita Alvarez - who's running against Cook County Commissioner Tony...

How does one tiny little country spread the word about a certain not-so-little country that wants to see it wiped off the map?

It shouts from the rafters and knocks on a lot of doors, in a lot of countries, making one-on-one connections with regular people.

Tuesday morning, as the...

Women and children first -- first to get aid from gentlemen on a sinking ship, but also first to sink in a financial downturn.

It's no secret that the economy's tumble is making the work of "helping people" even more challenging. And even if you only have five bucks to...

I was at the Executives Club of Chicago CEO Breakfast this morning listening to Martin Slark, Vice Chairman and CEO of Molex, Inc. talk about leading truly global companies (Chicago-based Molex does 73 percent of its 3.3 billion dollars in sales outside of the U.S.) and he was -- let's...

Oprah Winfrey spoke to "Hispanics" on Monday. This is what she said: "You don't need to learn English, I'll tell you what to buy and how to live your life by my tenets in Spanish. And those of you who only watch English-language TV - I don't care about you."

Don't worry, Chicago - our city's finest will not be armed, decked out in riot gear, and glowering at you as you attempt to exercise your right to vote in the upcoming historic election.

But that's the visual image I got when I read the following bulletin in Wednesday's...

Congratulations, Palos Heights, Illinois, you are not home to a "creepy" terrorist/rapist who would stalk, abduct, and rape a seventeen-year-old girl working a night shift at the sandwich shop down the street.

In case you hadn't heard, on September 16th, a five-foot tall,...

The Chicago Public Schools unveiled a bevy of new Renaissance 2010 schools at a press conference Wednesday. Among the new schools focusing on vocational studies, studying the humanities, learning about health and loving the Chicago Bulls, one sticks out for striving to create a safe haven for gay students.

The...

Tell me if this shocks you: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, minorities comprise 17% of the United States workforce, and it'll be 20% by 2016. But 95 percent of all executive-level positions in the United States are still held by white males, according to David A. Thomas and...

Lila Downs burst into the big time after her star turn as the sultry singer who serenades Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Salma Hayek's 2002 biopic Frida.

Her deep, sexy voice belted out many of the songs on the Academy Award nominated soundtrack and put her center stage with...

Look around the office - the work landscape has changed dramatically in the last ten years.

You've got Mary yakking with Laqueesha about what was on Oprah yesterday and Mario discussing Sunday's Bears game with John, while Maalik, Esperanza and Bob plan next week's "fall celebration." It's like a...

On September 12, 2007, I stood next to the Chicago river with a skinny little guy who had gotten it into his head that he was going to ride his rickety bicycle from the 'burbs to Argentina for twenty months in order to raise money for low-income students to go...

Friday morning, fresh off back-to-back trips to Beijing for the Olympics and the Paralympics, Chicago bid chairman Patrick Ryan, a self-described insurance salesman, gave the Executives' Club of Chicago a major rah-rah session, accented by a fly in the ointment.

Ryan showed a packed Fairmont Hotel ballroom, flanked by a...

First off, let me put this out there ... I love white people. Half my family (the half that isn't, by the numbers, even more Filipino than it is Hispanic) is white.

I'm also not the type to go around being all bitter that "da man" is trying to keep...

Anyone who cares about kids in this town getting a shot at a decent education surely looked at the Chicago Public School children who marched into Winnetka and felt the rumbling pride of civil rights crusades past.

The images were enough to make even the most cynical opponent of Meeks'...

Forget the fact that, if the McCain/Palin ticket won, Sarah Palin would be the first female vice president in history. If the Alaskan hottie made it into the big leagues, would her little cutie, Trig, make it into the annals of history as the first Down Syndrome baby in White...

When you stop to look at the array of organizations trying to address the crushing problem of poor children being left behind in U.S. schools - there are the wonk strategists, the conscientious objectors - and then there are those out there with kids and parents, just getting stuff done,...