“Placing Equity Front and Center” for Teacher Education in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

Although equity-minded practitioners, scholars, and policymakers in the field of teacher education believed we were making slow but steady progress in educational parity, we find this certainty tested at a critical time in history. As this editorial was being finalized on June 29, 2023, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) was forced to respond to the ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard University and University of North Carolina (2023), declaring the pronouncement to strike down affirmative action and other racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions as “contrary to our collective efforts to build an educator workforce that is diverse and representative” (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education [AACTE], 2023, para. 1). Affirmative action does not focus on specific quotas but rather on targeted goals to tackle past discrimination in a particular institution or in broader society through “good-faith efforts . . . to identify, select, and train potentially qualified men and women” (Feinberg, 2005, p. 272). Already plagued by a lack of representation of teachers of color in university educator preparation programs (AACTE, 2018) and U.S. classrooms (Hill-Jackson, 2017; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2018), practitioners and scholars of teacher education sustain a collective gut punch as we ponder how the impactful work of equity in teacher education would continue in a politically polarized nation.