This article largely agrees with John White's characterizations of the relationships among philosophy of education, philosophy more generally, and the conventional world. It then extends what White identifies as the fundamental problem that should now be occupying philosophy of education--the irreconcilable opposition between education for…

Education policy decisions are both normatively and empirically challenging. These decisions require the consideration of both relevant values and empirical facts. Values tell us what we have reason to care about, and facts can be used to describe what is possible. Following Hamlin and Stemplowska, we distinguish between a theory of ideals and…

The expectation that schools resuscitate civic virtues and create a vibrant civic and public sphere competes with a more powerful contemporary demand on schools, namely, that they generate equal opportunity and mobility, especially for poor and minority youth. This equal opportunity is framed solely in the context of grades on standardized tests.…

Girls' education has been a focus of international development policy for several decades. The discursive framing of international organizations' policy initiatives relating to girls' education, however, limits the potential for discussing complex gender issues that affect the possibilities for gender equity. Because discourse shapes our…

This article examines the rationales for school choice, and the significance of choice mechanisms for racial disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes. It identifies tensions between liberty-based rationales and equality-based rationales, and surveys research findings on the outcomes of school choice policies, especially with regard to…

Gender equality in education has become a highly embedded norm in global development policy, as well as within the poverty reduction and national development policies of aid recipient countries. Despite such progress, however, we know little about the significance of competing gender equality and education policy orientations (e.g., human capital,…

Some political philosophers have recently argued that providing K-12 students with an adequate education suffices for social justice in education provided that the threshold of educational adequacy is properly understood. Others have argued that adequacy is insufficient for social justice. In this article I side with the latter group. I extend…

While commitment to a universal entitlement to education is highly desirable, some significant limitations have been identified in the right to education as currently expressed and implemented. This article assesses the contribution that the capabilities approach can make in this regard. While some proponents have suggested that capabilities…

Education has become one of the foremost arenas in which political liberals attempt to differentiate their account from that of comprehensive liberals. Rawls posits that the requirements of his theory, as laid out in "Political Liberalism," will be far less stringent than those of liberals such as Kant, Mill or Joseph Raz. However, a number of…

Two approaches to making judgments about moral urgency in educational policy have prevailed in American law and public policy. One approach holds that educational policy should aspire to realizing equal opportunities in education for all. The other approach holds that educational policy should aspire to realizing adequate opportunities in…

In thinking about how a just state should assess and respond to inequalities in the distribution of particular goods, such as health and education, attention should be paid, first, to the causes of inequality with respect to these goods, and second, to the question of whether it is possible, and, if possible, morally appropriate, to enact policy…

While Canada is often described as the most and France as one of the least successful countries in the realm of immigrant incorporation, the question remains unresolved of how to evaluate a country's policies for dealing with immigration and incorporation relative to that of others. Our strategy is to examine the relationships among (1) countries'…

Children of affluent parents get more schooling than children of poor parents, which seems to imply that reducing income inequality would reduce inequality in schooling. Similarly, one of the best predictors of an individual's income is his educational attainment, which seems to imply that reducing inequality in schooling will reduce income…

Deliberative theory has served two purposes in recent studies of education policy-making at the community level in the US: as a lens through which to examine existing practices, and as an ideal toward which to strive. These studies, though, overlook a prior and important theoretical question: "should" deliberative theory be applied to education…

Harry Brighouse has advanced an intriguing set of arguments about the place of human flourishing in liberal educational theory. In his book "On Education", Brighouse argues that autonomy can be justified instrumentally because it promotes flourishing. He links flourishing to the psychological concept of "subjective wellbeing" and he spells out the…