An Analysis of NCATE\u27s Decision to Drop Social Justice

Maybe it wouldn\u27t bother us if we hadn\u27t picked up tiny rotten teeth from our classroom floors in a toothfairyless neighborhood. Maybe it wouldn\u27t seem as offensive if we hadn\u27t watched our pupils gobble down free breakfasts and lunches—for some, their only meals five days a week. Perhaps we could overlook it if we didn\u27t know about our students’ losses—a brother killed in a drive-by shooting, a grandmother’s grisly death dealt by a crack dealer, house fires that destroyed everything. Maybe it wouldn\u27t incense us if our elementary pupils had had more up-to-date reference materials than 1952 dictionaries and a donated set of World Books, if we had had a school library or hot water or some playground equipment. And we probably wouldn\u27t be as disgusted if we hadn\u27t watched our pupils cry and vomit on high-stakes test days when they intuitively knew they couldn\u27t pass a test because of their limited vocabularies and lack of prior knowledge—consequences of poverty and societal neglect (Johnson & Johnson, 2006). But disgusted we are because NCATE did not stand up for the children we recently taught. Why did the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) have such difficulty defining “social justice” that it has banished the term from its lexicon