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This study investigated the factors that pushed and pulled social justice educators out of urban elementary and secondary (K-12) schools and into teacher education. The authors utilized an autoethnography and counternarrative methodology to examine the systemic and distinct factors that impacted four social justice educators' decisions to leave K-12 schools. Two central categories emerged: neoliberal K-12 push factors and pull factors that lured educators into academia. The study also revealed K-12 persistence strategies and describes the way educators reimagine their work in teacher education. It is imperative to learn how educators are maintaining their commitment to social justice on all fronts.

For decades, research has shown the pervasive racism of teacher education and its harmful impact on teacher candidates of Color. In this conceptual article, we argue that teacher education programs must interrogate how racism is embedded structurally through policies and practices that guide the various facets of the institution. We build from higher education scholarship on racial climate and "health" and teacher education research on race and racism to explore how multiple dimensions of a teacher education program (historical, organizational, compositional, behavioral, and psychological) accumulate and shape the experiences and well-being of teacher candidates of Color. We offer a model to assist teacher education scholars, administrators, and practitioners to reflect upon their current structures as they strive for a healthy racial climate responsive to the experiences and needs of a diverse teaching force.

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) provided a commentary on the manuscripts in the first part of this special issue, which highlighted the benefits of edTPA and the necessity for such assessment programs to improve teacher education and strengthen teaching practices. In turn, the authors responded to the SCALE commentary. The authors' responses raise concerns about equity, fairness, and unintended consequences of teacher performance assessments. These responses highlight the need for continued dialogue on ways to improve teacher education and strengthen the teaching profession.

The rise of high-stakes, standardized, teacher performance assessments (TPAs) is central to the industry being created out of the regulation, policing, and evaluation of university-based teacher education In addition to reinforcing a narrow and counter-critical framework, TPAs can shift responsibility for the evaluation of teacher candidates from university-based teacher educators with a comprehensive and nuanced fluency in candidates' preparedness to external scorers trained to standardize and depersonalize effective practice. In this article, four social justice-oriented teacher educators from three different states examine the practical and political effects of TPAs in their local contexts. By analyzing the curricular, pedagogical, and political implications of this high-stakes standardization of their field, they speak back to a policy landscape that too often marginalizes the voices of the teachers and students it purports to serve. Throughout, they examine the dilemmas of practice created by TPAs, as teachers and teacher educators seek to redefine what it means to enact justice-oriented professional agency in an increasingly regulated context. A critical counternarrative methodological approach was used to collect and process the authors' lived stories and then to collaboratively reflect upon each other's personal/professional experiences with TPAs. Several strategies are identified for enacting agency in response to TPAs, including curricular acts of resistance, resistance through participation in state legislative processes, policymaking within teacher education programs, the production of activist scholarship, and refusal to participate at all. Ways are suggested for teacher educators to minimize, mitigate, and resist unjust policy through curricular, political, and scholarly activism.

Based on a 3-year qualitative case study of political education projects within an urban teacher-led grassroots activist organization, this article explores the formation of grassroots political education and how it mediated the development of teachers as community organizers. Through a documentary and narrative account, this article argues that the mediation of political education must be understood relationally and that "teacher as community organizer" is an important and emergent paradigm in social justice teacher education. Implications for social justice teacher education and research on the development and sustainability of social justice educators are suggested.

This study investigated the factors that pushed and pulled social justice educators out of urban elementary and secondary (K-12) schools and into teacher education. The authors utilized an auto ethnography and counternarrative methodology to examine the systemic and distinct factors that impacted four social justice educators' decisions to leave K-12 schools. Two central categories emerged: neoliberal K-12 push factors and pull factors that lured educators into academia. The study also revealed K-12 persistence strategies and describes the way educators reimagine their work in teacher education. It is imperative to learn how educators are maintaining their commitment to social justice on all fronts., Introduction I am not leaving the fight, but simply moving to another front. The fight continues on the same. Wherever I am I will be engaged as you are in [...]

As social justice-oriented teachers and teacher educators, it can seem as if we are fighting a losing battle against neoliberal education policies designed to disrupt and dismantle our field. In this article we draw upon traditions of critical race theory, counterstorying, and critical hope to examine the complex realities of contemporary teacher education and envision an alternate reality in which our profession develops and thrives. To do so, we first present a series of autoethnographic critical case studies that highlight dilemmas of practice. We then invite readers to examine each case through multiple lenses, as they grapple with the complexities of a visionary path forward. In so doing, we offer tools for critical professional development that articulate, deconstruct, and reimagine social justice-oriented teacher education and activism in this changing landscape. We close with recommendations to increase our collective capacity as social justice teacher educators, placing a central emphasis on the need for community, critical professional development, and hope.