SOCIAL JUSTICE

Social Justice should be getting the children on an even playing field by getting them to stick to the three R’s reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the sense that they comprehend and can give back a answer that has been critically thought through. Then once a child can do that, educators can begin to teach science and math in everyday things. Such as playing basketball, throwing a baseball, making a cake, or even frying eggs. Using music, physical education, and art classes to help with the science and math comprehension of what these children are doing will give the United States a better class of people. One caveat, they need to teach this same thing to the next generation and so on.....

Dan, at 5:40 am EST on November 27, 2007

What is ’social justice?’

As an educational consultant, I’ve observed teacher-ed (TE) courses at the PhD level. The students struck me as former K-12 teachers who mostly enjoyed putting-down their former K-12 peers and superiors.

Encouraging children, especially K-8, to treat others with basic human kindness is one thing.

Using the Public School Monopoly to fight for increased school taxes, reduced public oversight over K-12, and attack one of the two major political parties (who could that be?) is quite another.

Want your version of ’social justice?’ Start your own charter school — hundreds of others are. Better than forcing your beliefs on those who are required by law to attend.

Art D., at 7:25 am EDT on June 6, 2006

Justice is

The Art D.s of the world make me laugh — perhaps starting with the “educational consultant” title ("thanks for the paid advice"). But really, perhaps he could begin by reading the Constitution, and the writings of Madison and Jefferson, the speeches of Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, etc, and he’d get a better idea of what American Social Justice means. Universal Education after all, is America’s greatest “social justice” experiment. The idea of giving all children an “equal” start in life, no matter what the class, race, religion, or competence of their parents.

You can’t actually believe in the Republican vision of meritocracy — that hard work succeeds, unless you believe in the social justice concepts that define the American myth. And if our teachers are not committed to the idea that all children deserve an equivalent chance, I’m not sure why they should be in a public school classroom.

Of course, only the American right could consistently argue that “everyone has an equal chance” in our economy, while insisting on the right to inherit all your wealth and position, on the right to unequal schooling, on the right to inherited privilege in university admissions. If their kids didn’t already fill their exclusive little prep schools, I’d tell them to go start those.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 9:05 am EDT on June 6, 2006

The true mission

Ira Socol gives away the true mission of schools of education: to carefully inculcate class bigotry, and to be sure to revive it wherever it is beginning to disappear.

Now I see, at 10:00 am EDT on June 6, 2006

Lets be clear what we are talking about

The phrase “social justice” or the word “justice” is general enough that no one ever has to oppose it. They just have to change their meaning of it, and people often do.

It is exactly that breadth of possible interpretation that causes the phrase to be opposed.

If democracy is important enough to defend in the schools even in the face of explicit opposition, then democracy has earned its place in the schools. Controversial topics like Affirmative Action or Socialized Medicine have emphatically NOT earned that place, and it is their presence and the presence of other politically charged ideas, under the guise of “social justice", that is being opposed.

Those whose causes happen to be served by the current state of things pretend not to see this distinction.

Samwise, at 12:55 pm EDT on June 6, 2006

Exhibits A,B, &C

The posts of Socol, Lune, and Doss will confirm the suspicions of those who worry about “social justice” being used as a trump card for the ideology of the cultural left.

Gipper, at 1:50 pm EDT on June 6, 2006

Social Justice

“Social Justice” as that phrase is used by the Ed. schools means the use of State power to enforce equality. Not equality before the law, which is secured by the Constitution and exists in this country to a greater extent than anywhere else on the planet, but equality of income and wealth. That’s all it means. In other words, take from the rich (and the middle class) and give to the poor, and use the power of the State to do it. Now this seems pretty ideological to me, and I can’t see how a belief in Jacobinism relates in any way, shape or form to the skills required to teach primary or secondary school, but apparently some of you do.

DBL, at 5:30 pm EDT on June 6, 2006

What do Gipper (et al) disagree with?

Gipper,

Do you really oppose universal education? Opportunity for all? Equal rights under the law? The concept of fairly administered justice? You seem to be declaring these as dangerous left-wing ideas. Could you please enlighten us?

-Ira

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 5:30 pm EDT on June 6, 2006

social justice defined

“Social justice,” or “Giustizia Sociale,” is a religious belief cluster based on the teachings of Catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas that originated in the published works of the Catholic Jesuit priest Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio of Sicily, specifically in his book, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Based on Fact), 1840–1843.Since that time, it has become firmly emplaced in Roman Catholic doctrine relating to society, economics and quality of life of citizens.

Since about 1971 when John Rawls wrote “A Theory of Justice,” the radical left has piggybacked off the goodwill earned by decades of theological study, charity in the field, and public relations campaigns in the media conducted by the Church since the late 1800s. The radical left took the Catholic notion of social justice and perverted itinto a euphemism for collectivism, socialism, and communism.

Given the vague conflated definitions of this requirement, requiring dispositions advocating social justice has no placein any public school or any teacher standard or any accreditation agency standard.

Getting rid of social justice will not solve the problem, because the problem is in the subjective, vague definition of “dispositions” itself, permitting it to be selectively used as a weeding tool against white, conservative or libertarian, heterosexual, Christians (usually though not always male) in teacher credential candidate students.

Steve H, student at social justice state u, at 9:00 pm EDT on June 6, 2006

An irrelevant hidden agenda

NCATE buckled because it is a bit like other Federally chartered corporations. Its got a staff, who want salaries, who like expense accounts, who like to have TE schools grovelling at their feet for accreditation, and who want to keep the Federal Fathers (with the fund$) as far away as possible. So, the explicit language goes out but that will change nothing — nothing is ‘left’ to chance anyway.

As far as the effect on teacher candidates or their students — the social indoctrination fails. The smart candidates will ape the party line and get their certification. Their smart students move on out of the educational system as cynics and get ahead. The dumb students move on out (or are thrown out) of the educational system and figure out their own personal definitions of “social justice” in the course of living their real lives. NCATE and its possible hidden political agenda are irrelevant in the long run for the teachers and the students.

Bruce Harvey, at 4:25 am EDT on June 7, 2006

Michael V.

Considering the source —

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18967

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=19211

Enter laughing. Really. Thanks for contributing to the cause of publicly-funded charter education. It is people like you, that have average Americans pushing to have their kids put in private schools.

As for the Socal’s of the world — ” .. to try to separate the idea of tax-supported universal education ..” — hey, Messrs. I-Know-Economics, read the research by Greene (U-Ark.).

All the extra public money spent on K-12 — and nothing to show for it! How long do you think the public is going to tolerate that kind of non-performance?

Suggestion: focus on basics first, then social justice. That ought to take at least 20 years. Good luck.

Art D., at 8:10 am EDT on June 7, 2006

As one who is neither right wing nor left wing, I find the conversation fascinating. I have learned that word meanings are contextual and often poorly revealed. I was once in the United Nations’ building when another person purchased the German Democratic Republic flag as a souvenir. She was convinced that the word “Democratic” defined the flag as belonging to West Germany, then a separate nation.

Germany’s much earlier leader, Herr Hitler, called for living room for the Germans. Now, who on this forum is against living room? The German national socialist workers party rose to power on alluring slogans, few of which forecasted thought control and gas chambers. Who here is opposed to workers or to national parties? One of the death camps carried a slogan “Work Shall Make You Free.” Irony, anyone?

Eugene McCarthy used words of admirable patriotic heritage. In his hands, they became tools of oppression.

The debate is not over words per se, but how they are employed by those who have power over their interpretation.

Marvinlee, at 4:40 pm EDT on June 7, 2006

Response to DLB

Dear Mr. or Ms. DLB, or is it Dr. DLB,

You are absolutely correct in your interpretation that I am insisting that those who teach should agree with me. Where you are wrong, of course, is in your characterization of what I believe.

I believe that a free society requires that free people allow others to be free, but that allowance does not extend to the point of using that freedom to limit others’ freedom. To allow that kind of freedom would be a direct challenge the notion of freedom, itself. Dr. King said it much better, when he said that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I believe that justice can only be achieved when we acknowledge that profound fact, and I believe that anyone who does not acknowledge that fact and who is unwilling to act accordingly, has no place in a classroom of children whose learning of that fact will determine the future of our democratic aspirations to be a free people.

We may distinguish, too, between legal justice and social justice. The goal of social justice was around long before legal justice arrived, and it will still be here long after legal justice leaves the arena. For instance, educational discrimination based on race was antithetical to social justice long before Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeks, and it will remain antithetical to social justice even as the Brown decision has been and continues to be eviscerated by court decisions and legislative actions aimed at protecting the rights of the majority. This is part of the historical reality of living with racism today, just as the struggle to end racism will remain central to the struggle to create a free, democratic society.

Yet I am not naive enough to expect that such freedom will be freely given: the struggle for social justice will remain a struggle. As Dr. King said, too, “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

That demand for freedom, then, can only begin when that oppression is acknowledged and understood by the oppressed. And that, of course, is why Dewey, King, Freire, and anyone else aimed at unlocking the chains of ignorance are castigated and demonized by those who have much more to protect than they have to give.

Nobody said it was going to be easy, Mr. or Ms. or Dr. DLB.

SincerelyJim Horn

Jim Horn, Assistant Professor at Monmouth University, at 12:15 pm EDT on June 8, 2006

Social justice in practice

Concerns about dispositions and social justice are not simply matters of definition. See the 5/23/05 essay in IHED by KC Johnson. Here is an excerpt about “social justice” in action:

“The program at my own institution, Brooklyn College, exemplifies how application of NCATE’s new approach can easily be used to screen out potential public school teachers who hold undesirable political beliefs. Brooklyn’s education faculty, which assumes as fact that “an education centered on social justice prepares the highest quality of future teachers,” recently launched a pilot initiative to assess all education students on whether they are “knowledgeable about, sensitive to and responsive to issues of diversity and social justice as these influence curriculum and pedagogy, school culture, relationships with colleagues and members of the school community, and candidates’ analysis of student work and behavior.”

At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been translated into practice through a required class called “Language and Literacy Development in Secondary Education.” According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognize “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.

Troubled by this response, at least five students filed written complaints with the department chair last December. They received no formal reply, but soon discovered that their coming forward had negative consequences. One senior was told to leave Brooklyn and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two other students were accused of violating the college’s “academic integrity” policy and refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or an attorney to a meeting with the dean of undergraduate studies to discuss the allegation. Despite the unseemly nature of retaliating against student whistleblowers, Brooklyn’s overall manner of assessing commitment to “social justice” conforms to NCATE’s recommendations, previewing what we can expect as other education programs more aggressively scrutinize their students’ “dispositions” on the matter.

Must prospective public school teachers accept a professor’s argument that “white English” is the “oppressors’ language” in order to enter the profession? In our ideologically imbalanced academic climate, the combination of dispositions theory and the new NCATE guidelines risk producing a new generation of educators certified not because they mastered their subject but because they expressed fealty to the professoriate’s conception of “social justice.”

Gipper, at 3:25 pm EDT on June 8, 2006

Hilarious slip

Marvinlee, I’m sure hoping you were referring to JOE McCarthy when you said that Eugene McCarthy turned high-sounding words into tools of oppression. Gene McCarthy was a complex, fascinating man, but not one to oppress others.

JMG, at 1:40 pm EDT on June 9, 2006

Reply re Brooklyn College

HERE IS THE QUOTE I’m replying to:

See the 5/23/05 essay in IHED by KC Johnson. Here is an excerpt about “social justice” in action:

“The program at my own institution, Brooklyn College, exemplifies how application of NCATE’s new approach can easily be used to screen out potential public school teachers who hold undesirable political beliefs. Brooklyn’s education faculty, which assumes as fact that “an education centered on social justice prepares the highest quality of future teachers,” recently launched a pilot initiative to assess all education students on whether they are “knowledgeable about, sensitive to and responsive to issues of diversity and social justice as these influence curriculum and pedagogy, school culture, relationships with colleagues and members of the school community, and candidates’ analysis of student work and behavior.”

At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been translated into practice through a required class called “Language and Literacy Development in Secondary Education.” According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognize “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.

Troubled by this response, at least five students filed written complaints with the department chair last December. They received no formal reply, but soon discovered that their coming forward had negative consequences. One senior was told to leave Brooklyn and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two other students were accused of violating the college’s “academic integrity” policy and refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or an attorney to a meeting with the dean of undergraduate studies to discuss the allegation. Despite the unseemly nature of retaliating against student whistleblowers, Brooklyn’s overall manner of assessing commitment to “social justice” conforms to NCATE’s recommendations, previewing what we can expect as other education programs more aggressively scrutinize their students’ “dispositions” on the matter.

THIS QUOTE WAS POSTED ON MAY 23, 2005.

I bet that that showing of the film FARENHEIT 9/11 before the election is the LIE that David Horowitz touted in one of his speeches that he recently (testifying before Pennsylvania legislators in support of his “academic bill of rights") had to admit never took place.

Now I could be wrong — there could be an HONEST charge that Farenheit 9/11 was shown in a class where it wasn’t relevant coupled with a DISHONEST charge that it was shown — and this story by K.C. Johnson may in fact be true.

HOWEVER — there are so many of these “anecdotal” stories about the big bad PC-police messing with all these poor oppressed conservatives that I remain completely skeptical about all of them without REAL FIRM EVIDENCE.

One fact that everyone keeps throwing around:

the alleged 8:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans (the number I heard from one of Horowitz’s recent speeches was 80% to 20% which is 4:1 but let that pass).

What is the relevance of this?

Democrats are not leftists. (maybe some like Dennis Kucinich are but John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton anything remotely approaching left-wing?? — I mean Barack Obama voted for the bankruptcy bill!!)

Here’s a CONCRETE issue in terms of “social justice.” If people are graduating from any college or university in the U.S. (especially if those graduating plan to TEACH in the US) with the belief that an important way to pursue “social justice” is to make sure white male Christians are not oppressed regularly by governments, private busineses and non-profits (including educational institutions) practicing affirmative action for blacks, gays and women then they are getting a lousy education.

We disagree about what “social justice” means because we disagree about the FACTS of history and the present.

Mike Meeropol Professor of Economics Western New England CollegeSPringfield, MA

Mike Meeropol, Brooklyn College’s PC police at work at Western New England College, at 3:15 pm EDT on June 10, 2006

liberal academics gone wild on dispositions

Addressing the views of Socol: again, the first definition of social justice was by the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests in the 1840s and 1850s, and no one has yet to provide a citation that proves otherwise. The current politically correct but Orwellian variant common on today’s U.S. campuses is most handily defined as a euphemism for socialism, and no one yet has really shown otherwise.

American history is replete in the elevation of the individual as sovereign— that is, again, the individual, not an economic class. The latter is classist, socialist revisionism and is a common misconception of students who studied under radical leftist revisionist history instructors in the US the 1970s and afterwards.

The use of terms such as “Francisco Franco Academy” betrays a bias typical in academia— one is either a liberal... or a Nazi, a false dichotomy that every independent, libertarian, and conservative runs into on a college campus sooner or later.

Addressing the views of Horn: first, thanks for the vivid and entertaining demonstration of Godwin’s Law.

Beliefs, values, and ethical commitments do matter, of course, but the genius of the American form of government is in its philosophically limited nature: for example, it is limited from trying to establish a state religion. That is, the government is prohibited by law from prohibiting beliefs and it is prohibited by law from compelling beliefs.

Now, what are dispositions? Dispositions, according to NCATE, are guided by beliefs and attitudes. How then can instructors in a public university assess a student’s beliefs and attitudes without running afoul of the moral equivalent of establishing a state religion? Dispositions theory puts public education on a slippery slope which ultimately leads back to the pre-Enlightenment, medieval notion of the infallible monarchy— the power of its authority derived from God and not to be challenged by the unwashed peasant masses.

Enforced beliefs and attitudes by the state of any stripe? Is that what we want out of public education? out of government? Heaven knows, almost no one in their right mind wants skinhead racists teaching their children in schools. I do not. No teaching credential candidate student I ever met did. I think this is a liberal red herring. But even if they exist, these types of individuals can usually be screened out by careful interviewing and due diligence checking resumes. As every potential employer should know, the best indicator of a prospective employee’s future behavior is his or her past behavior— not what he or she professes to believe to an interviewer (or college instructor) on the spot. These types of tests can be gamed by unscrupulous (and potentially racist) teacher credential candidate students. Yet principled conservative and libertarian students are assiduously weeded out by liberal ed school instructors every day, using the fig leaf of dispositions (usually heralded by the instructor exhorting students to “tell the class what your opinion is; there are no wrong answers"). The people who pass, in other words, are either liberals to begin with, or those who are willing to compromise their principles (that is, who are willing to lie about who they are and what they believe in) for short term gain. In other words, with dispositions in place in ed schools, the end result is that principled conservatives and libertarians become as rare as hen’s teeth relative to liberals and “truth-challenged” others in public schools across the country. Is that the sum total of what public school students shall get in terms of broad exposure to different viewpoints?

What if the shoe were on the other foot? What if principled liberals were by some stroke of government magic wand systematically weeded out of teacher programsand ultimately public schools across the country? Would liberal parents and liberal taxpayers be justified in voicing concern at that point??? All principled liberals should be just as much concerned as conservatives and libertarians at the dispositions litmus tests being applied. Students in public schools are being systematically robbed of opportunities to understand the loyal opposition points of view (to the standard liberal positions taught in virtually all public schools today unchallenged) and therefore are robbed of the opportunities to test their own convictions in debate and analysis, which is the crucible where effective learning takes place (you don’t know the material, effectively, unless you can defend it).

When decent principled people are required to lie to get credentialed by the state to become teachers, how well does that bespeak of our system of education, not to mentionour culture and our civilization?

The presumtion that NCATE dispositions can be traced back to pre-WWII Germany is, ironically, in part correct. The National Socialists wanted to make sure that only persons with the “correct” views towards Jews were allowed in the military and other positions of power. The study of psychology was still in development in academia at the time, and Germany was in the lead until the purge of Jews from its universities in the early 1930’s. Simultaneously, the development of personality battery tests were deployed in the military, leading to the professionalization of psychology as a field with practical application (not just research). Read: The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany. Series: Cambridge Studies in the History of Psychology. Ulfried Geuter. These folks developed political litmus tests very similar the type that ed schools today apply to ed school students.

Addressing Sweitzer’s concerns: this is a false dichotomy argument again, liberals versus Nazis. It ignores the current reality on campus that liberals overwhelmingly dominate faculties. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and academia is not an exception to the general rule, unfortunately. Saying that libertarians and conservatives would not object to the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction does not address the tilt of the current playing field, even if it were entirely true (which is at least somewhat debatable, especially if one actually bothers to read and understand the ideologically viewpoint neutral provisions in the Academic Bill of Rights and similar proposals).Use of false dichotomy logic is characteristic not of dispassioned academic discourse so much as it is characteristic of the shrill leftist radicalist rhetoric of the By-Any-Means-Necessary, U.S.-is-Evil-Incarnate crowd.

To all who advocate dispositions theory, we may all end up in the future waving at each other from between the slats in the cattle cars as our trains depart for the re-education camps. Dispositions theory is an end run around the Constitution, a way to hold citizens accountable and liable for their beliefs and attitudes and ultimately lead to the assessment of citizens as enemies of the state based on their ideological views. DBL, Esq. is correct: social justice as taught in contemporary classes of higher education is little more than subversion of our current system of justice, that is, the last bastion of defense that preserves the vestiges of liberty and individual sovereignty that is every U.S. citizen’s natural birthright.

Another book to check is Friederich Hayek’s “Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2 : The Mirage of Social Justice.” People who debate dispositions theory should really know what they are talking about from all sides lest they unintentionally advocate something a bit more Orwellian in implication than what they originally may have imagined they wanted...

Steve H, teaching credential student at social justice state u, at 5:50 am EDT on June 14, 2006

NCATE and the SBC

I presented at the DOE hearing mentioned in the article, and appropriately described NCATE’s approach to dispositional assessment as quackery. It is tragic that the field of education has deteriorated to the level of abuse that NCATE demonstrates and that the Department of Education recognizes. My following blog post concerning NCATE’s dispositional assessment approach an unconstitutional governmental establishment of religion appears at http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/002608.html

>Southern Baptists Reject Exit Strategy

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention refused to back a resolution that would support an exodus from the public schools. There are at least three grounds for supporting a pullout that are separate from and in addition to the religious ones that Roger Moran and Bruce Shortt are advocating. Indeed, I would go further than Moran and Shortt. Since (1) the public schools increasingly have abandoned their commitment to welding a common American polity in favor of fragmentation of group interests and (2) they do a dismal job of education, why should they exist at all? I would support their abolition in favor of a voucher-based private system.

1. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) oversees the accreditation of teacher edcuation programs and so heavily influences most teacher education in the US. NCATE has engaged in a program of indoctrination in its teacher education programs that is similar to the inculcation of religious belief. It is called dispositional assessment. NCATE had gone so far as to say that education programs could require students to adopt “social justice dispositions” without saying what the dispositions are. NCATE backed down from advocating “social justice dispositions” because of our pressure but continues to advocate the use of “dispositions” and “dispositional assessment". These are just as bad from Moran’s/Shortt’s standpoint, because the dispositions that NCATE advocates are general and vague and can easily cross over into religious doctrines and may frequently do so.

NCATE’s use of dispositions has not been validated and so is a matter of faith or belief, not legitimate science. This in turn suggests that NCATE is using “dispositions” in its accreditation standards not to encourage competent teaching but rather to indoctrinate education students into belief systems, possibly, for example, rejection of religion. There is nothing to stop an education school from using the dispositional approach that NCATE advocates to say that contempt for religion is a necessary disposition for a teacher. Indeed, one of my colleagues at Brooklyn College, Timothy Shortell, a sociology professor, has publicly stated his view that believers are “moral retards.” Clearly, such views could easily spill over into a concept such as “dispositional assessment.”

2. As Diane Ravitch ably demonstrates in “Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform", quackery and ideologically motivated junk science has dominated the education field for the past 80 years. The teaching and education methods in the public schools are failures and by keeping their children in public schools, an increasing percentage of parents may find that they are giving their children a bad education. Hence an exodus is not just a matter of religion. It is in many cases an intelligent reaction to a breakdown of the educational system. Indeed, no one criticizes virtually every elite New Yorker for not having sent their children to New York City’s public schools. With repeated left wing educationist attacks on the City’s best schools, such as Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, why on earth would they send their children to New York’s public schools? Are members of the SBC not entitled to an education at least as good as that of elite New York’s?

3. One of the arguments that may be used to support education in public schools is that by sending children to public schools we are participating in a common society and encouraging a common set of American values. That is my favorite argument for public schools, but the problem is that the education of teachers and the ideologies of the education establishment have increasingly become rooted in identity politics, group interests, opposition to the “melting pot", disdain for the United States, and racialist doctrines that assault Whites, the United States, Christians and Jews. This becomes evident when you review NCATE’s accreditation standards at www.ncate.org. While virtually every page of NCATE’s guides and philosophies contains reference to “diversity", the NCATE literature has virtually nothing to say about competent teaching of mathematics, reading and writing.* NCATE’s standards, which have been recognized by the Bush administration’s Department of Education, are an embarrassment to the nation.

NCATE’s accreditation policies heavily emphasize an identity politics approach. Given that the public schools increasingly have abandoned their support for a common polity, under policies that the Department of Education recognizes, the justification for public schools is considerably weakened. Coupled with the decline in educational standards and decades of incompetent educationist practices, the time may be drawing near to declare the public education system’s bankruptcy. If the education system were General Motors, it would have been taken over by Ford or Toyota long ago.

*One of the chief effects of NCATE’s emphasis on identity politics and its devaluation of basic education is the victimization of students from minority and immigrant backgrounds, who are not educated and acculturated adequately to become candidates for the best jobs, which are apparently reserved for children who go to elite private schools and so learn to write English well.

— Mitchell Langbert | Jun. 18, 2006 | 11:25 AM

Mitchell Langbert, Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, at 12:30 pm EDT on June 19, 2006

Social Justice

In my opinion, the proposed professional dispositions and “fairness” are not nearly adequate enough to support a professional education unit. If law, social work, nursing, psychology, etc can speak the words, “social justice,” professional educators certainly need to have an understanding of what social justice means in the preparation of professional educators. Minorities realized great progress, especially during the latter half of the last century, but the educational advancement of ethnic and minority groups has not matched their growth in numbers in this country. I agree, surprisingly, with the National Association of Scholars who argues that teacher candidates should not be judged based on their performance in the area of “social justice.” It is rather difficult to imagine how teacher candidates and other professional educators could be fairly judged using a rubric (i.e. target, acceptable, unacceptable) to score their commitment and performance in a domain called “social justice.” NCATE, however, could be most helpful to its member institutions by “defining” social justice rather than simply removing it as if it is no longer relevant or suggest that “it” is sufficiently “covered” under diversity. Some would argue that anything found in the NCATE standards should be measurable and observable in the candidates’ performance. I argue that NCATE is more than what teachers and other professional educators “know and do” in the field (Standards 1, 2 and 3) – Candidate knowledge, skills, and dispositions are outputs. Social justice (input) is a well-established social “ideal” that speaks to how an institution defines diversity, recruits and retains its faculty and students (Standard 4); how an institution considers its faculty and their relevant qualifications (Standard 5); and how the Unit allocates its funds to ensure diversity and justice (Standard 6). Diversity is one matter—it does not ensure that “no child is left behind,” only social justice can attempt to properly address myriad issues which preclude the possibility that all children have access to a quality education (the core principle of social justice). Social justice tends to equalize disparities in educational attainment, educational achievement and socio-economic status, and the impact of prejudice and discrimination on educational attainment. For example, we just hired our first African American male faculty this week. Although the candidate is clearly qualified, it was social justice (the ideal) that provided the argument to justify his hiring, not diversity. We have many faculty from around the world, albeit eminently qualified and essential to execution of our academic programs, but do not necessarily look or sound like the students who are showing up for class in Detroit, Saginaw, Flint, and Ypsilanti. It is social justice that sustains our Minority Achievement Recruitment and Retention Program (MARS) that serves our teacher candidates who experience all types of challenges on and off our campus and in our classrooms. It is social justice that ensures that all students, educator candidates, and faculty are protected against discrimination, physical abuse, emotional distress, and social stigmatization regardless of their race, gender, class, or sexual orientation. This, of course, includes those persons who identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay, or transgender. Further, we are the largest producer of special education educators in the nation. The history of special education in the country was built around issues that we define as social justice. Although the United States is trailing other industrialized nations in mathematics and sciences, we still lead the world in establishing the knowledge base and best practices for the education of children with disabilities. It will be social justice that will infuse a sense of resilience among the relatively few black males on our campus. African American males graduate at 26% in Michigan – the lowest rate in the nation. Hispanic males and females are not far behind. If these students, who live at the margins of society, can not successfully complete high school, we will not need to worry about them entering our teacher preparation programs. In essence, social justice is the one true ideal that ensures that “no child is left behind.” It appears ironic that those same factions that would argue that no child be left behind, would also aggressively work to remove social justice from the nomenclature. Can we have it both ways? EMU has produced 1793 teachers for Michigan schools in the last three years. Only 143 are African American and a mere 43 are Hispanic. Among the African Americans only 4 are mathematics teachers and 5 are science teachers. These are clear issues which cry out for a remedy that we have come to call in this country, “social justice.” Let me share some background information which further frames my concerns with respect to the need for social justice as a social construct within the NCATE nomenclature. For more than 150 years, Eastern Michigan University has played a major state and national role in the preparation of teachers, other school personnel and related professionals. EMU has a historic and valued place as the first “normal school” west of the Alleghenies. Eastern was among the first institutions involved with the preparation of physical educators and special education teachers. The Professional Education Unit, (consisting of programs housed in the College of Education (COE), the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS), and the College of Technology (COT) is one of the nation’s largest preparers of professional education personnel, offering programs at the bachelor, masters, specialists and doctoral degree levels. The University’s programs have received a number of national recognitions, are fully accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), and are approved by the Michigan Department of Education. In almost every instance where a program-specific national recognition exists, the Professional Education Unit at EMU holds this recognition at the highest level. Through its Office of Collaborative Education, the College of Education has created numerous partnerships with local school districts that are interested in enhancing a variety of school improvement activities.EMU graduates are highly prized and are aggressively recruited at the national level. Our alumni hold many distinctions, including the Pulitzer Prize, National Student Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year, and serve as presidents or executives of major national professional organizations. In addition, 26 EMU graduates have received the Prestigious Milken Family Foundation Award for teaching excellence in the classroom—the largest number accredited to any teacher preparation institution in the nation.

The College of Education is an essential component of the Professional Education Unit and is the home for the Head of the Professional Education Unit, the Certification Officer, and the Accreditation Coordinator. There are more than 8,500 students enrolled in myriad educational programs housed in the College of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business, and the College of Technology.

The Professional Education Unit at EMU, annually, certifies more than 1200 teachers representing elementary, secondary, and special education (See Table 1 below):

Table 1.

Teacher Preparation Program Completers by Level of Certification Completions Elementary Ed. Secondary Ed. Special and Physical Ed Grand Total 2003-04 553 460 190 1203 2004-05 497 450 197 11442005-06 555 503 235 1293

If schools matter, access to the “highest” qualified teachers matters most. As the largest preparer of certified teachers for the State, the College of Education at EMU is attentive to the following data generated from the placements of certified teachers in Michigan between 2003 –2005. This data provides powerful insights into the needs for highly qualified teachers to meet the social justice challenges presented by the dearth of highest qualified teachers in schools with the greatest needs. Please note the numbers and placements of mathematics, science, special education and African American teachers. Schools and colleges of education have a role to play in addressing these disparities—we call it social justice.

Given our size and scope, EMU serves as a good benchmark for forecasting trends in teacher preparation in Michigan and perhaps the nation. The data that follows provides real assertions about teacher certification and social justice:

1. There are obvious critical needs in the areas of secondary mathematics and the sciences, especially given the new high school graduation requirements. 2. EMU placed nearly 50% of its graduates in schools around the State. This is particularly impressive given the fact that Michigan is an export state, meaning we produce more teachers that can be hired within the state. 3. African American teachers are most likely teaching in predominately African American populated school districts. The good news is that increasing the number of highly qualified African American teachers will ensure that more African American students are served by African American teachers. 4. Proportionately, Hispanics have the largest number of mathematics teachers. Hispanics are, however, less likely to teach in districts where large numbers of Hispanic students are enrolled.5. There continues to be critical shortages of special education teachers in all categories by all races.

The data set consists of n = 1792 cases.

• Out of the 1792 teachers that accepted Michigan jobs during the past three academic years: - 1597 (89.1%) are White - 143 (8.0%) are African American - 29 (1.6%) are Hispanic - 10 (0.6%) are Asian- 5 (0.4%) are American Indian

• About one-quarter (443) of these teachers taught under the assignment description of “General EL K-5 all K-8 self-contained.”

• 5.9% (106) of teachers were in the area of Mathematics. - Of the 106 Math teachers, 94 were White, 5 were African-American and 5 were Hispanic. - White Math teachers, as a percentage of their teaching population, are 5.8%. - African-American Math teachers, as a percentage of their population, are 3.5%. - Hispanic Math teachers, as a percentage of their population, are 17.2%

• 4.7% (85) of teachers were in the area of Science. - Of the 85 Science teachers, 78 were White and 4 were African-American. - White Science teachers, as a percentage of their teaching population, are 4.9%; — African-American Science teachers, as a percentage of their teaching population, are 2.8%.

• 12.8% (230) of teachers were in the area of Special Education. - Of the 230 Special Education teachers, 211 were White, 18 were African- American, 1 was Asian. - White Special Education teachers, as a percentage of their teaching population, are 13.2%.- African-American Science teachers as a percentage of their teaching population, were 12.6%.

• African-American teachers (143) by location (Top 5). - 22 (15.3%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Detroit. - 9 (6.3%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Ypsilanti. - 7 (4.9%) who chose to work in Michigan are with Wayne RESA. - 6 (4.2%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Monroe.- 6 (4.2%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Ann Arbor.

• Hispanic teachers (29) by location (Top 5). - 6 (20.7%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Madison (Adrian). - 4 (13.8%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Howell. - 3 (10.3%) who chose to work in Michigan are in Detroit. - 3 (10.3%) who chose to work in Michigan are with Wayne RESA. - 2 (6.9%) who chose to work in Michigan are in both Pontiac and Plymouth-Canton.

Social justice has traditionally been the impetus for removing barriers that keep us mindful of the continued achievement and economics gaps between White and non-Hispanic and other racial/ethnic groups in the nation. For example, child poverty is a growing problem in Michigan. Since 2000, child poverty rates have increased from 14 to 17 percent, and there are approximately 26,000 more poor children in the state. More than a third of Michigan’s children live in low-income families. In Detroit, nearly three in four children are low income. 1. There are approximately 2.5 million children living in Michigan. 37%—926,000—live in low-income families. 17%—419,000—live in poor families. 2. There are approximately 262,000 children living in Detroit. 72%—188,000—live in low-income families.39%—101,000—live in poor families.

Attitudes, aspirations, and motivation are also of importance and explain a large portion of the social imbalances that remain after the removal of more tangible factors. Therefore attention must be paid to the social environment students come from and assess their opportunity for academic achievement in their formative years. Consider the high school completion rates by race and gender (see Table 2 below).Table 2: High school completion in MI by race and gender

Graduation Rate by Student Group Michigan (%) Nation (%) All Students 66.4 69.6 By Gender Male 62.7 65.2 Female 69.2 72.7 By Race and Ethnicity American Indian/Alaska Native 23.1 47.4 Asian/Pacific Islander 67.3 77.0 Hispanic 35.0 55.6 Black (not Hispanic) 31.6 51.6 White (not Hispanic) 74.7 76.2 By Gender and Race and Ethnicity Male American Indian/Alaska Native ** 42.7 Asian/Pacific Islander 60.7 73.1 Hispanic 29.0 50.1 Black (not Hispanic) 26.0 44.3 White (not Hispanic) 71.2 72.4 Female American Indian/Alaska Native 23.6 47.5 Asian/Pacific Islander 69.9 79.6 Hispanic 35.8 59.9 Black (not Hispanic) 35.4 57.8 White (not Hispanic) 76.3 77.9

Recommendations 1. Reinstate “social justice” within the “Glossary of NCATE Terms” and nomenclature; 2. Establish a subcommittee of the Standards Committee to properly “define” social justice for professional education units; 3. Charge the NCATE Standards Committee with defining “principles” of social justice aligned with ensuring that “no child is left behind.” 4. Charge each member institution with the accountability for implementing the principles of social justice and providing evidence of its implementation.5. Never judge individual candidates based upon their innate values and adherence to a social justice rubric, but establish a process which will allow professional education units to define and self-assess their commitment to social justice.

Vernon C. Polite, Dean at Eastern Michigan University, at 2:05 pm EDT on March 31, 2007