NCATE is the largest accrediting body for teacher education programs in the USA and has long welded the stick of accreditation over schools of education promoting dubious notions such as the use of teacher candidates’ “dispositions” as a measure of their ability to teach and of teacher education programs’ successes.
NCATE welds considerable power over the content of teacher education programs and that influence has increased in recent years as states adopted standards-based reform models forcing schools to adopt standardized curricula handed down from the state and forcing universities (via requirements that they be accredited) to adhere to NCATE’s standards.
While one can admire (and even praise) the sentiment that teacher candidates’ “dispositions” should be “guided by beliefs and attitudes such as caring, fairness, honesty and responsibility, and social justice,” but making dispositions an outcome measure was a problem from the start.
Now, the right-hearted (at least in terms of notions of social justice) NCATE has caved in to right-wing politicians by dropping the language of social justice completely. Here’s the story from The Chronicle of Higher Education: Accreditor of Education Schools Drops Controversial ‘Social Justice’ Language
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
By PAULA WASLEY
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education won a key endorsement on Monday in its quest for continued federal approval of its accrediting power after announcing that it would drop controversial language relating to “social justice” from its accrediting standards for teacher-preparation programs.
The council, which is the nation’s largest teacher-education accrediting organization, has come under fire from conservative activists for the wording of standards that require that candidates in education programs “demonstrate the content, pedagogical, and professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn.”The council, known as Ncate, had said that teacher candidates’ “dispositions” should be “guided by beliefs and attitudes such as caring, fairness, honesty and responsibility, and social justice.”
The concept of social justice, opponents contend, has political overtones and can be used by institutions to weed out would-be teachers based on their social and political beliefs. Several teacher candidates, in fact, have complained recently about education professors who seemed more interested in students’ political views than in their classroom performance (The Chronicle, December 16, 2005).
On Monday, at a hearing of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, Arthur E. Wise, president of Ncate, called the criticisms of the standards “unwarranted” but announced that the organization would drop “social justice” from the guidelines, “lest there be any misunderstanding about our intentions.”
Mr. Wise emphasized that the phrase “social justice” was merely an example of criteria institutions may adopt when assessing candidates’ dispositions, and was never intended as an accreditation requirement. Each institution, he said, was free to choose its own disposition evaluation criteria.
“The allegation that Ncate requires thought control is simply wrong,” he said.
His announcement pre-empted testimony from members of groups such as the National Association of Scholars and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, who had gathered to voice objections to the “social justice” provision and request that the Department of Education withhold renewal of its recognition of Ncate until that term was removed.
Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, said he was “delighted” by Ncate’s decision to strike the concept of “social justice” from its standards, calling the phrase “ideologically freighted” and “necessarily ambiguous.”
Similarly, Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, applauded the change as a “step in the right direction.”
“‘Social justice’ is simply too vague of a term and susceptible to interpretation,” he said.
But, although pleased with the modification, Anne D. Neal, the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said rewording the standards was not enough.
Higher-education institutions have “already adopted the standard and are using it in ways that lend itself to political litmus tests,” she said in an interview after the hearing, noting that several colleges have incorporated the words “social justice” into mission statements or teacher-evaluation forms.
It is, she said, “short-sighted to think that eliminating the words eliminates the problem.”
Mr. Wise countered that Ncate had already alerted member institutions to the changes and that a draft version of the revised standards was already available for public comment on the organization’s Web site.
The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity passed a motion recommending that the department renew its recognition of Ncate for five more years. It also recommended expanding the council’s authority to include the accreditation of programs offering distance education.
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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I think I remember some lawsuit a few months ago where an education student challenged NCATE’s dispositions. Apparantly a TA or professor noticed a bumper sticker in his notebook that read “diversity is perversity” and disclosed their concern with him becoming certified to teach. He challenged the disposition and got to stay in the program. I’m sure a future think tank position awaits the lad.
I can definately see the problems with measuring dispositions (what’s next, a “happiness index?!”, but what do we do when we have students who openly speak out against the rights of gays and lesbians, for example or say that other religions are invalid? If we were to express our concerns, we’d be labeled as interfering or as thought police.
Yet, to me, there’s a difference between not addressing religious and sexual preferences at all and full-on attacking them as immoral, which I’ve seen a lot more of lately. What happens when they eventually get up in front of kids (and ultimately their parents) who are of different faiths or atheist, or gay/lesbian? Who speaks up for them?
I guess I’m cofronting the question of whose rights take precedence more and more. Religious fundamentalists claim that recognizing the rights of gays infringes on their religious freedom. Yet, for fundamentalists to feel “free” and not harassed would mean that the rest of us face unreasonable restrictions on our freedoms, in the name of a religion that, at least to this date, has no empirical proof to back it up (and I say this as a Christian myself, but more in the social justice frame than the current fascist one)!
The more I look at these issues, the more I’m coming to the conclusion that a certain thread of fundamentalist belief is not compatible with democracy. There’s no way to reconcile it. To make this group happy means that a) we don’t talk at all about anything controversial, or b) we only use their version of Christianity to determine law and policy.