Am I the only one disturbed by this?

@james
Accreditor Drops Social-Justice Language

By ROBIN WILSON

The board of the nation's largest organization accrediting teacher-education
programs has formally voted to drop controversial language about social
justice from its standards for evaluating teacher-education programs.

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education had been
criticized by some students — and by conservative activists — for suggesting
that teacher-preparation programs should evaluate students' professional
"dispositions" by considering students' "beliefs and attitudes such as
caring, fairness, honesty and responsibility, and social justice."

The concept of social justice, opponents said, had been used by institutions
to weed out would-be teachers based on their social and political beliefs.
Several teacher candidates had complained about education professors who
seemed more interested in students' political views than in their classroom
performance.

The accreditor first announced in the summer of 2006 that it would eliminate
social justice from its recommendation for how teacher-education programs
could evaluate students. Now its board has formally voted to do so, said
Jane Liebrand, a spokeswoman for the organization.

Under a new definition in the glossary of its standards, the accreditor says
it expects institutions to assess students' "professional dispositions" by
considering students' sense of "fairness and the belief that all students
can learn."
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http://chronicle.com
Section: Money & Management
Volume 54, Issue 11, Page A28

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James Sheldon
Graduate Student, Education: Equity and Social Justice, San Francisco State
University
Special Education Paraprofessional, San Francisco Unified School District
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