To intervene and provide effective affordable assistance, the Hip-Hop Education Center (HHEC) was formed to fully promulgate and explore the potential of Hip-Hop pedagogy. Officially launched in June 2010 under the auspices of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University, and a generous donation from the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

The mission of the HHEC is to cultivate and support Hip-Hop scholars, teaching artists, cultural workers and activists, and social entrepreneurs to professionalize the field of Hip-Hop Education and inform the larger education sector. It achieves this through research and evaluation of programs, development of standards and best practices, documentation and archiving, community outreach and programming, leadership and teacher training, teacher placement, policy and advocacy development, and social enterprising.