## 1. Equality of Educational Opportunity as an Independent Concern


### 1.1 The Value of Education



Education has both instrumental and intrinsic value for individuals
and for societies as a whole. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated in its
unanimous decision in *Brown v. Board of Education* (1954),
"In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be
expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an
education". The instrumental goals of K-12 education for
individuals include access to higher education and a constellation of
private benefits that follow college education such as access to
interesting jobs with more vacation time and better health care;
greater personal and professional mobility, better decision-making
skills (Institute for Higher Education Policy 1998) and more autonomy
at work. Research further shows that education levels are correlated
with health and wealth: the more education a person has, the healthier
and wealthier she is likely to be. At the same time, education is also
considered intrinsically valuable. Developing one's skills and
talents can be enjoyable or good in itself and a central component of
a flourishing life, regardless of the consequences this has for wealth
or health.



In addition to the instrumental and intrinsic value of education to an
individual, education is also valuable for society. All societies
benefit from productive and knowledgeable workers who can generate
social surplus and respond to preferences. Furthermore, democratic
societies need to create citizens who are capable of participating in
the project of shared governance. The correlation between educational
attainment and civic participation is strong and well-documented:
educated citizens have more opportunities to obtain and exercise civic
skills, are more interested in and informed about politics, and in
turn, are more likely to vote (Verba, Schlozman, & Brady 1995:
432-437, 445; Dee 2004).



It is therefore relatively uncontroversial to say that education is a
highly valuable good to both individuals and to society, especially to
democratic societies. This makes questions about who has access to
high-quality educational opportunities, and how educational
opportunities should be distributed, particularly important.


### 1.2 The Scarcity of High-Quality Educational Opportunity



Questions about the just distribution of educational opportunity are
especially vexing given the scarcity of resources allocated to
education. Although developed societies provide some education for
free to their citizens, funding for education is always in competition
with the need to provide citizens with other social goods. As Amy
Gutmann writes: "The price of using education to maximize the
life chances of children would be to forego these other social
goods" (Gutmann 1999: 129). Other basic welfare needs (e.g.,
housing, healthcare, food), as well as cultural goods (e.g., museums,
parks, concert halls), must be weighed against public funds allocated
to education, thereby making high-quality education--even in
highly productive societies--scarce to some degree.



This scarcity is evident on several fronts with respect to higher
education in the United States, which attracts applicants from all
over the world. There is fierce competition for admission to highly
selective colleges and universities in the U.S. that admit fewer than
10% of applicants. In this arena, wealthier parents sometimes go to
great lengths to bolster their children's applications by paying
for tutoring, extracurricular activities, and admissions
coaching--activities that can put applicants without these
resources at a significant disadvantage in the admissions process. The
recent "varsity blues" scandal, in which wealthy families
paid millions of dollars to a college coach who promised admission to
elite U.S. universities, is an extreme case in point about the degree
of competition attached to selective universities.



A more urgent demonstration of the scarcity of educational opportunity
in the U.S. and many other societies is evident in how access to
high-quality primary and secondary education is effectively limited to
children whose families can afford housing in middle-class
neighborhoods, or who have access to private schools via tuition or
scholarships. Despite the *Brown* decision's eradication
of *de jure*, or state-sanctioned, segregation by race in
schools, public schools in the U.S. remain sharply segregated by race
and by class due to *de facto* residential segregation. This
segregation has significant consequences for poor and minority
students' educational opportunity. Given the strong correlation
between school segregation, racial achievement gaps, and overall
school quality, poor and minority students are disproportionately
educated in lower performing schools compared to their white and more
advantaged peers (Reardon 2015 and Reardon, Weathers, Fahle, Jang, and
Kalogrides 2022 in
 Other Internet Resources).
 The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these systemic background
inequalities, with prolonged school closures in the U.S.
disproportionately impacting low-income children who rely on schools
to provide an array of social welfare services, including meals
(Levinson, Cevik, and Lipsitch 2020; Levinson, Geller, and Allen,
2021).



In view of the constellation of intrinsic and instrumental goods that
flow from educational opportunity, and in the context of relative
scarcity, questions about how educational resources should be
distributed are especially pressing as a matter of social and economic
justice.


### 1.3 The State Regulation of Education



A third consideration that underscores the importance of thinking
about the distribution of educational opportunities is that in most
developed societies, the vast majority of such opportunities are
provided through and regulated by the state. All developed societies
have a legal requirement that children attend school for a certain
number of years. This means that, unlike other policy levers,
education is typically under the control of state institutions and has
the potential to reach the vast majority of the nation's
children across racial, religious, class, and gender-based divides.
And given the myriad benefits that flow from education, it is arguably
a state's most powerful mechanism for influencing the lives of
its members. This makes education perhaps the most important function
of government.



Since education is an integral function of government, and because it
is an opportunity that government largely provides, there are special
constraints on its distribution. Justice, if it requires nothing else,
requires that governments treat their citizens with equal concern and
respect. The state, for example, cannot justly provide unequal
benefits to children on the basis of factors such as their race or
gender. Indeed, such discrimination, even when it arises from indirect
state measures such as the funding of schools from property taxes, can
be especially pernicious to and is not lost on children. When poor and
minority children see, for example, that their more advantaged peers
attend better resourced public schools--a conclusion that can be
drawn in many cases simply by comparing how school facilities
look--they may internalize the view that the state cares less
about cultivating their interests and skills. Children in this
position suffer the dignitary injury of feeling that they are not
equal to their peers in the state's eyes (Kozol 1991, 2005).
This harm is especially damaging to one's self-respect because
it is the development of one's talents that is at stake; whether
or not one has opportunities to gain the skills and confidence to
pursue their conception of the good is central to what Rawls calls
"the social basis of self-respect" (Rawls 1999: sections
65 and 67; Satz 2007: 639).


## 2. A Brief History of Equality of Educational Opportunity in the United States



Given the importance of education to individuals and to society, it is
clear that education cannot be distributed by the market: it needs to
be available to all children, even children whose parents would be too
poor or too indifferent to pay for it. Furthermore, if education is to
play a role in equipping young people to participate in the labor
market, to participate in democratic governance, and more generally to
lead flourishing lives, then its content cannot be arbitrary but
rather must be tailored to meet these desired outcomes. We address
considerations of education's content in subsequent sections,
turning first to how equality of opportunity has been interpreted in
the U.S., where we can see some of the implications of a truncated
understanding of equality of opportunity in stark form.



The United States Supreme Court's *Brown v. Board of
Education* (1954) decision, in finding racially segregated public
schools unconstitutional, declared that the opportunity for an
education, when provided for by the state, is a "right which
must be available to all on equal terms". But *de facto*
racial segregation persists in the U.S. and is coupled today with
ever-growing class-based segregation (Reardon & Bischoff 2011).
Black students are far more likely to attend high-poverty schools than
their white peers (see school poverty, in the National Equity Atlas,
 Other Internet Resources).
 The resulting, compounded educational disadvantages that poor,
minority children face in the U.S. are significant. As research
continues to document, the racial/ethnic achievement gap is persistent
and large in the U.S. and has lasting labor market effects, whereby
the achievement gap has been found to explain a significant part of
racial/ethnic income disparities (Reardon, Robinson-Cimpian, &
Weathers 2015; Reardon 2021 in Other Internet Resources).



Efforts to combat *de facto* segregation have been limited by
U.S. jurisprudence since the *Brown* decision. Although the
Supreme Court previously allowed plans to integrate schools within a
particular school district (see *Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Board of Education*, 1970), in *Milliken v. Bradley* (1974)
the Court struck down an inter-district busing plan that moved
students across district lines to desegregate the Detroit city and
surrounding suburban schools. This limitation on legal remedies for
*de facto* segregation has significantly hampered integration
efforts given that most school districts in the U.S. are not racially
diverse. More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court further curtailed
integration efforts within the small number of districts that are
racially diverse. In its *Parents Involved in Community Schools v.
Seattle School District* decision (2006), the Court prohibited
districts from explicitly using individual students' race as a
factor in school assignment plans, thereby condoning only race-neutral
integration plans in what many regarded as the Court's final
retreat from redressing *de facto* segregation (e.g., Rebell
2009; Ryan 2007).



The persistence of race and class-based segregation in the U.S. and
the educational disadvantages that follow are rooted in the U.S.
system of geographically defined school districts, whereby schools are
largely funded by local property taxes that differ substantially
between communities based on property values. This patchwork system
compounds the educational disadvantages that follow from residential
segregation. The 50 states in the United States differ dramatically in
the level of per pupil educational funding that they provide; indeed
some of these interstate disparities are greater than the intra-state
inequalities that have received greater attention (Liu 2006). The
system for funding schools and the residential segregation it
exacerbates--itself the product of decades of laws and conscious
policies to keep the races separate--has produced and continues
to yield funding inequalities that disproportionately affect poor
Americans of color. The segregation of resources, with greater
resources flowing to children from families in the upper quintiles of
society, makes it highly unlikely that children from the lower
quintiles can have an equal chance of achieving success. This is
evident in research documenting the growing achievement gap between
high and low-income students, which is now 30-40% greater among
children born in 2001 than those born twenty-five years before
(Reardon 2011: 91; Reardon 2021 in Other Internet Resources).



Given the judicial retreat from remedying *de facto*
segregation, many advocates have shifted their attention to the school
finance system. A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in this arena
was an initial setback to efforts to advance educational equality via
federal school finance litigation. In this case, *San Antonio
Independent School District v. Rodriguez* (1973), the Court found
that there is no federal right to education, and that funding
inequalities among school districts due to variations in property tax
revenue are not unconstitutional. This decision further entrenched the
educational inequalities that follow from the geographic happenstance
of a child's home. In contrast to the U.S., many other countries
do not finance their schools through local property taxes (e.g.,
Finland funds its schools at the national level based on the number of
students they educate, and it provides more funding to schools that
educate more students who are immigrants or whose parents are
unemployed or uneducated; Sahlberg 2011). Many other societies
distribute educational resources in a more centralized way than does
the United States, which leaves educational funding, and even
educational standards, to a large extent in local hands (for a recent
volume on the idea of a federal right to education in the U.S., see
Robinson 2019).



The U.S. Supreme Court did, however, leave an opening for state courts
to act, and so legal advocates have adopted a state-by-state approach
in the decades since *Rodriguez*. As this litigation has
unfolded in almost every U.S. state, a policy debate with
philosophical underpinnings has emerged around the question: Should
educational resources be distributed on an equal basis (an equity
model), or according to a sufficiency threshold (adequacy model)?
State constitutions differ as to the basis they suggest for the
state's interest in funding education.



In the legal and political sphere, the adequacy approach has been more
successful in school finance litigation at the state level. But the
philosophical elaboration of equity and adequacy as competing ideals
is somewhat distinct from how they are used in legal battles and
political discourse. As we describe below, some theorists challenge
the cogency of the sharp distinction often made between these two ways
of justifying the distribution of educational resources.


## 3. The Meaning of and Debates about Equality of Educational Opportunity



Debates about the meaning and value of equality of educational
opportunity--and about whether equal educational opportunity
requires equality or adequacy--can be considered in the light of
two questions.



The first question is that given the diverse goals of
education--preparing individuals for the job market, for
democratic citizenship, and to experience the intrinsic goods of
education--is there only one justified rubric for distributing
educational resources? For instance, distributional policies that
support career preparation may be very different from those that
support other goals like preparation for democratic citizenship. Since
the labor market is a highly competitive sphere, education for labor
market success appears to be a positional good, understood as a good
whose value depends on one's relative standing (i.e., the
quality of my education for labor market success depends to a great
extent on how good your education in this realm is since we will be
vying for jobs). In a highly competitive job market with high stakes,
distributing educational resources equally becomes especially
important.



Conversely, education for human flourishing can be seen as a
non-positional good because an individual's attainment of the
intrinsic goods of education (e.g., to enjoy literature, to be
intellectually curious) is not compromised by others' success in
this realm; it is not a competitive field. In fact, one's
ability to enjoy the arts might be increased by others' ability
to do so too. An adequacy threshold for distributing educational
opportunities directed at human flourishing may therefore be
justified. As our educational goals vary, so too might the
distributive principles for educational resources need to change.



The second question we must consider is about the best interpretation
of the ideal of equality of educational opportunity. Is equality of
opportunity achieved when everyone with similar talent gets the same
results? When per pupil expenditures are equalized? When those with
the same natural talent potential get the same opportunities?



Answers to these two fundamental questions enable philosophers to
construct a conception of equality of educational opportunity. Of
course, philosophical controversies remain even supposing the content
of the conception can be settled. Some of these controversies concern
clashes with other values, including that of the family and diversity:
What limits do parental rights put on the pursuit of equality of
educational opportunity? Is affirmative action required by or contrary
to equality of educational opportunity? Other issues arise when we try
to interpret what equality of educational opportunity means for those
with disabilities, or when we attempt to define "merit"
and "native talent potential".



The following sections of this entry will describe the key maneuvers
in different ways of answering these two questions: first, what the
ideal can mean and what distributive principles realize it; and
second, how to navigate tensions between this ideal and other values.
The first section below introduces debates about the various
definitions of equality of educational opportunity and its associated
distributive principles. Some of the material covered in this section
comes from the literature on equality of opportunity more generally,
which we apply to educational aspects of these debates (for a recent
article in this spirit written for the education policy and research
community, see Levinson, Geron, and Brighouse, 2022). The subsequent
section surveys debates about how to negotiate the challenges faced by
those looking to realize the ideal of equality of educational
opportunity, including whether equality of educational opportunity can
be reconciled with respecting the private sphere of the family.


### 3.1 What is Educational Opportunity?



Before we can say what an equal educational opportunity is, we need to
say what an opportunity is in general. Peter Westen (1985) provides a
helpful definition of an opportunity that can be applied to the
education sphere. For Westen, an opportunity is a relationship between
an agent or a set of agents, and a desired goal, mediated by certain
obstacles, none of which are insurmountable. For instance, Alice has
an opportunity to become educated mediated by obstacles such as
enrolling at a school, putting in hard work, and the quality of her
teachers.



To employ this concept in the context of education, we need to answer
questions about who the proper agents are, what the appropriate goal
or goals are, and what, if any, obstacles are legitimate. For example,
if we take admission at a highly selective college as our goal, and
the citizens of some country as our agents, we might think that
meeting a certain academic requirement, such as passing an entrance
exam, is a relevant obstacle that should be permitted to stand in the
way of the goal. In this context, we will also think that an
applicant's race, sex or religious affiliation should not be
obstacles. When the appropriate group faces only the relevant
obstacles with respect to the appropriate goal we can say that
equality of opportunity obtains between the members of that group.



For instance, Alice and Belle have equal opportunity to attend a
selective university if, all other things being equal, the only
obstacle they face is passing an entry test, which is a relevant
obstacle. They do not have equal opportunity if Alice also faces an
irrelevant obstacle, such as race-based discrimination, that Belle
does not face.



Educational opportunities are those opportunities that aim to enable
individuals to acquire knowledge and certain skills, and to cultivate
certain capacities. As noted above, we may value educational
opportunity in some instances for the intrinsic value of acquiring
knowledge, while in other cases we may care more about its
instrumental effects on individual welfare (e.g., labor market
success). Whatever our rationale for caring about educational
opportunity, in order for an individual to be said to have this
opportunity, she must have no insurmountable, irrelevant obstacles to
the particular educational goal we have in mind.



Most commonly we associate the goals that constitute educational
opportunities with access to educational institutions such as schools
and universities, but apprenticeships and professional development and
training also provide educational opportunities. In addition, there
are many informal types of educational opportunity. These include
public debates and lectures as well as time spent reading, practicing,
or thinking outside of a school context.



Most contributors to debates about equality of educational opportunity
focus on opportunities that are made available through public
K-12 and higher education institutions. The reasons for this are
similar to our reasons for being concerned with educational
opportunity in the first place. Those institutional opportunities are
more easily regulated and under the state's control, they
educate the vast majority of children in the developed world, and they
have a profound effect on the quality of our lives. As a result, most
of the literature primarily concerns K-12 educational
institutions and colleges. Nevertheless, a crucial question concerns
the extent to which the state should try to address inequalities in
educational opportunities that are generated through the family. For
example, we know that parents who read to their children give their
children an educational advantage (Hutton et al. 2015). Should the
state seek to correct for the disadvantages of those children whose
parents could not (or would not) read to them? More generally, parents
pass on not only genetic traits to their children, but also
characteristics that differentially prepare children for success at
school, and even at jobs. Again, how should the state respond to these
and other factors that influence children's likelihood of
success at school? Are these appropriate obstacles for children to
face or not?



The next sections survey different interpretations of equal
educational opportunity in view of these questions.


### 3.2 Formal Equality of Educational Opportunity



Formal equality of opportunity is the view that formal rules that make
reference to personal or ascriptive characteristics should not be
obstacles to achieving certain goals. Such characteristics include
race, socio-economic class, gender, religion, and sexuality. It is
essentially a concept of equality before the law. It is often
understood as an anti-discrimination principle (See the entry on
 equality of opportunity
 for more discussion).



As applied to educational opportunity, formal equality of opportunity
requires the removal of formal obstacles, in the form of laws or
entrance criteria for educational institutions, which refer to
ascriptive characteristics. For instance, formal equality of
opportunity is opposed to legally segregated schools whose admissions
policy states that students be white, male or belong to a certain
religion. This conception is likewise opposed to laws that endorse or
require segregation in schools. The *Brown* decision is
certainly consistent with at least formal equality of opportunity. At
the same time, it is worth noting that formal equality of opportunity
is at odds with the tolerant attitude many societies take toward
schools and colleges that are segregated by sex and religion. One
possible way in which these practices might be reconciled with formal
equality of educational opportunity would be to argue that this
principle applies only to public educational institutions and not
private schools and colleges. Some people accept that formal equality
of opportunity is a sufficient norm to guide the distribution of
educational opportunities, but most political and moral philosophers
accept it as necessary but not sufficient. A principle of
non-discrimination leaves open whether and to what extent the state
needs to provide the resources that are required for education, or how
those resources should be distributed (see Gutmann 1999: 127ff). Since
resources are necessary for education--whether in the form of
books and materials, teachers, facilities, and so on--formal
equality of opportunity is compatible with some children failing to
actually receive an education. Formal equality of opportunity fails to
provide effective equality of opportunity.



Additionally, formal equality of educational opportunity is not
concerned with the informal rules, social norms, or private
discrimination that people in a society face that can have a profound
effect on a child's opportunities for education. Consider that
formal equality of opportunity is compatible with school segregation,
if school attendance zones were determined by residence and residence
were segregated by race and social class (as is typically the case in
the U.S.). If integration is a moral imperative, formal equality of
opportunity cannot achieve this goal (Anderson 2010). Many people
believe that insofar as informal discrimination is an unfair obstacle
to educational opportunity, it is a serious problem that requires
policy attention.



Even if formal equality of opportunity could be defended as a just
distributional principle outside of the educational context, perhaps
because going beyond it violates certain rights (see Nozick 1997), it
cannot be defended in the context of schooling. No democratic society
can justify failing to educate the children of its poorest students.
(Additionally, see Friedman & Friedman, 1990, for a libertarian
argument for universal education based on its third party
effects.)


### 3.3 Meritocratic Equality of Educational Opportunity



Proponents of meritocratic equality of opportunity argue that no other
obstacle besides merit should stand in the way of achievement of the
desired goals. This view requires that educational goods be
distributed solely in accordance with individual merit. In the context
of education, merit is often measured by entrance requirements,
aptitude tests, or grades on exams. Of course, merit could be defined
in some other way--by how hard a student works, by how much a
student improves, or by classroom participation, although all of these
indicators pose measurement challenges.



Meritocratic equality of opportunity has well-known limitations,
especially with respect to children. If educational opportunities
should be given to those who have the most merit in terms of the best
scores on entrance tests, we will overlook the fact that merit is
endogenous to education, which is to say, educational opportunity
itself creates merit (Satz 2007). The more educational opportunities
an individual child has, the more "merit" that child may
come to have. This might suggest that we should pay more attention to
individuals' underlying potential rather than to their assessed
merit. Yet few people believe that we should give opportunities to
those who have the most underlying but uncultivated ability at the
expense of those who have less underlying ability or who are less
qualified but have worked hard (Miller 1996).



To illustrate a second limitation with the meritocratic conception of
equal educational opportunity, imagine that all highly selective
university places have been awarded to members of the upper class
through cronyism, and that a progressive new government is suddenly
elected into power to enforce meritocratic admissions. After
generations of consolidating superior education, jobs and wealth at
the expense of the poor, the upper-classes are in a far better place,
particularly if private schooling is available, to ensure that their
children end up being the most meritorious, thereby preserving vast
social inequalities between members of different classes. Although
some opportunities are open to all equally, opportunities to develop
"merit" are not distributed equally (Williams 1962).
Intergenerational transmission of opportunities to cultivate merit
would generate a deeply divided and unequal society, which is at odds
with the ideal of equality of educational opportunity.



Two further limitations concerning meritocratic equality of
opportunity in the context of education are worth noting, aside from
the possible toxic consequences of engaging in meritocratic rhetoric
(Young 1958; Sandel 2020). The first, as has already been mentioned,
is that the definition of merit itself can be contentious. Is there an
account of merit that is wholly independent of conceptions of justice
(Sen 2000)? Is merit simply what maximizes productivity? Should merit
be based solely on test scores or also take into account moral
attributes like the ability to work cooperatively with others?



The second is that while conditioning educational opportunities on
"merit" may look compelling when dealing with young
adults, it is deeply problematic when applied to very young children.
As Michael Walzer (1983: 203) notes, the job of the reading teacher is
to teach children to read, not merely to offer the opportunity to
learn to read. And this job presumably includes all children in a
classroom--even those who are not especially
"meritorious". Perhaps this is also why the educational
"tracking" of very young children on the basis of ability
seems especially objectionable--there are certain capacities that
need to be cultivated in all children (Satz 2007).


### 3.4 Fair Equality of Educational Opportunity



Because of the limits of formal equality of opportunity, John Rawls
developed a conception he calls Fair Equality of Opportunity (FEO).
FEO requires that social offices and positions be formally open to
all, and that individuals who are similarly talented and motivated
should have a roughly equal chance to attain these positions,
independent of their social class background (Rawls 2001:
42-44). FEO holds that all citizens of a society count as the
relevant agents, the desired goal is offices and positions, and the
obstacles people should not face includes their social class
background. The obstacles people may legitimately face include having
fewer developed abilities or less willingness to use them.



When applied to education, this principle may support educational
measures that close the achievement gap between the rich and the poor
with the same high talent potentials, assuming that these children can
be identified. This is because such students from poorer backgrounds
should fare as well as their wealthier peers with the same potentials.
The Rawlsian principle of FEO aims to eliminate the effects of social
background and economic class on educational achievement. Fair
equality of opportunity therefore offers a radical interpretation of
equality of educational opportunity.


### 3.5 Debates about Fair Equality of Educational Opportunity



Debates about FEO have focused on the relative importance of the goods
it regulates (i.e., access to offices and positions) and the fact that
it regards inequalities in inborn potential as relevant obstacles
generally, and in the education arena.



In *A Theory of Justice*, Rawls accords the fair equality of
opportunity principle priority over access to other types of
advantages such as income and wealth. Disputing this priority, some
have argued that the opportunities that FEO regulates are not more
important than these other goods and that we should prefer a principle
(known, for example, in Rawls' work as the difference principle)
that ensures that the least advantaged are as well-off as possible in
terms of income (or according to some critics, well-being) (Alexander
1985; Arneson 1999; Clayton 2001; Miklosi 2010). Richard Arneson
presses this complaint forcefully in his paper "Against Rawlsian
Equality of Opportunity". Rawls' argument for FEO over the
difference principle comes from a commitment to individuals'
self-respect and the contribution that the ability to compete for
offices and social positions on fair terms make to that self-respect.
But Arneson argues that those among us with lesser capacities might
reasonably reject according such weight to the self-respect of the
talented. After all, the self-respect derived from the results of a
"natural lottery" is unequally distributed. The untalented
among us, Arneson argues, would prefer increases in well-being to a
principle of self-respect that confers no benefit to them.



In terms of education, rather than ensuring that those with the same
inborn talent potential and ambition have the same level of
educational achievement, Arneson would emphasize that educational
opportunities should aim at promoting the welfare of the least
advantaged. This is more important, as he sees it, than ensuring that
future competitions for jobs are fairly structured. But Rawls and his
defenders have argued that wealth and welfare are different in kind
from the goods that FEO regulates, and that FEO pertains to more
important goods that are closely connected to autonomy, the social
bases of self-respect, and what he calls the two moral powers. This
explains their priority and irreducibility (Taylor 2004; Shields 2015;
Shiffrin 2004). Further, if everyone had a decent minimum, then the
additional contribution of wealth to well-being is less significant.
In subsequent work however, Rawls does acknowledge that the priority
of FEO over his difference principle may be less stringent than he
thought.



Some philosophers criticize FEO as insufficiently egalitarian. This
criticism has taken two forms. First, some claim that by making fair
opportunities relative to motivation, FEO has insufficient bite in a
non-ideal world in which inequality frequently produces diminished
aspirations in the oppressed. If women have been socialized for
centuries to think that certain positions in society are beyond their
capacities, and accordingly they are not motivated to pursue such
positions, does FEO have the resources to criticize this?



A second objection points out that inequalities in social luck (e.g.,
being born into a poor family, which FEO requires institutions to
correct for) and inequalities in natural luck (e.g., being born with
less talent potential, which FEO does not require institutions to
correct for) should be treated the same. It is easy to think that both
types of luck are equally arbitrary from a moral point of view, and
that this arbitrariness is a source of injustice. Indeed, some of
Rawls' own remarks seem to suggest this. Why, we might ask,
should educational institutions help close the gap between the
talented rich and talented poor but do nothing to close the gap
between talented and untalented students, when being untalented is,
just like social class, totally unavoidable. Matthew Clayton and
Richard Arneson press this complaint against Rawls. Clayton claims
that Rawls' own reasoning appears to privilege consistency about
both types of luck. So Rawls should either accept a different
principle applying to both natural and social luck, or else he must
condone a type of natural aristocracy for both talent and wealth.



Part of a response to these objections would have to defend the
resources that Rawlsian theory has for dealing with race and gender as
obstacles to fair equality of opportunity as well as the importance of
the specific goods that FEO protects. Rawls himself singled out
certain goods as having a higher priority than the goods of income and
wealth alone. In defense of Rawls on the first objection, Seana
Shiffrin (2004) has argued that FEO is a "robust
anti-discrimination principle", which should not be read out of
its context within Rawls' two principles as a whole. Moreover,
it



> 
> 
> would be difficult to provide the sort of educational training
> necessary to fulfill the principle's commands without thereby
> engaging in teaching that also combatted the stereotypes that produce
> significant differentiation of ambitions. (2004: 1650, fn31)
> 
> 
> 



On her view, the social bases of self-respect require the robust
anti-discrimination principle that FEO provides. In defense of Rawls
on the second objection, Robert Taylor (2004) has attempted to show
that self-realization has a crucial place in the hierarchy of goods on
the Kantian interpretation of Rawls' principles. He claims that
FEO therefore has priority over the difference principle because it
regulates goods that are more central to the exercise of our moral
powers and our highest order interests. However, his defense of Rawls
has been criticized for being overly perfectionist and therefore not
politically liberal. If this criticism is sound, then it may seem to
imply that while perfectionist Rawlsians can justify FEO, political
liberal Rawlsians cannot. Liam Shields (2015) argues that there is a
non-perfectionist account of self-realization and that this leads us
to supplement the principle of FEO with a principle of sufficient
self-realization. This may be one way to defend FEO against those who
favor a strict focus on welfare.



However, these responses would not satisfy those who believe that we
should adopt prioritarianism with respect to especially important
goods, distributing them in a way that gives priority to those who
have the least (Schouten 2012). Prioritarianism is a controversial
view, and has some controversial implications for the distribution of
K-12 education. For example, a prioritarian view might endorse
providing no state supported educational resources at all for those
who are extremely talented, unless it could be shown that doing so
improves the lot of the least well off. But many people will reject
this implication, believing that the state does have educational
obligations to the talented in their own right. Prioritarianism is
also inattentive to inequalities that obtain elsewhere in the
distributional scheme, for example, between those at the median and
those at the very top. Many egalitarians will be disturbed by
disproportionate opportunities going to the top 1%, even if the very
bottom of the distribution is improved. Rawls' view is not a
simple prioritarian one, but instead endorses a complex set of
principles--some of which are egalitarian such as FEO, and some
of which give special attention to the least well off, such as the
difference principle.



A final issue with FEO concerns our understanding of, and ability to
determine, natural levels of talent. It can be very hard to know who
has the most potential even when children are well into their
schooling. This suggests that it is not an appropriate or feasible
benchmark for the regulation of social institutions since we could
never know whether it was satisfied (Gomberg 1975). In addition, the
focus on natural talents has led some to consider the interaction
between epigenetic traits and social environmental factors, calling
into question the integrity of this distinction. This expands our
sense of the arbitrariness of natural inequalities and may provide
important insights on how to redress these inequalities (Loi, Del
Savio and Stupka 2013).


### 3.6 Equality of Educational Opportunity for Flourishing



One goal of education is to enable young people to grow into adults
who have flourishing lives. What would it mean to give children the
equal opportunity for flourishing lives? Again, that depends on the
view one should have about the appropriate obstacles. At the most
extreme, some have argued all people should face only the obstacle of
their own choices. The view makes sense of many of our intuitions. For
example, we tend to think that victims of bad luck, those born with
disabilities, or those who are severely harmed by natural disasters,
are entitled to aid. Meanwhile, those who gamble and lose are not
usually viewed as having any case for compensation.



The view so stated has very radical implications for educational
institutions since it charges them with ensuring that *all*
students have equal prospects for living well, regardless of
differences in their natural potentials. Thus, educational
institutions organized in accordance with equality of opportunity for
flourishing would not only have to provide compensatory support and
resources for those from disadvantaged family backgrounds, but also
for those who have genetic disadvantages.



Many philosophers have taken issue with this general view. Some have
argued that its unmitigated emphasis on choice and responsibility
would lead to stigma (e.g., Anderson 1999; Wolff 1998). Imagine a
letter to parents saying that the state is offering your child extra
opportunities because your genes create significant disadvantages.
Moreover, as has already been noted, any view emphasizing choice so
heavily seems especially out of place when dealing with young
children.



We also need an account of the flourishing that should be the aim of
educational opportunities. Is it to be understood in terms of
preference satisfaction? Or something else? Would it require autonomy?
In choosing an account of flourishing, we have to respond to these
questions and also be attentive to concerns about sectarianism. How
can an undoubtedly controversial account of what makes a human life
valuable (e.g., that a good life is an autonomous life) be a suitable
basis for educational policy in a pluralistic society? Many liberals
argue that families may justifiably reject, and request exemption
from, an education that conflicts with their religious, cultural, or
political views. They argue that an educational system driven by a
principle of equality of opportunity for flourishing will not respect
individuals' entitlement to pursue their own account of how they
wish to live, in accordance with their own reason (Rawls 2005). Of
course, it might be pointed out in reply, that educational decisions
made by parents affect not only their own views of how to live but
also, and more importantly, their children's.


### 3.7 Equality of Educational Opportunity for the Labor Market



A second key goal for education, which plays a prominent role in
public discourse, is to prepare individuals for productive employment.
Education for the labor market has significant benefits for the state
(e.g., GDP growth) and for individuals (e.g., remunerative and
rewarding employment and all its associated benefits, including more
discretionary income, more leisure time, and in the U.S., better
healthcare). This function of education is critically important as a
matter of justice. Education aimed at preparing individuals for
employment has become especially pressing in view of the income
inequalities that leading economists have highlighted (Piketty 2014;
Saez & Zucman 2014). And since education for employment is a
highly positional good given a competitive labor market, it matters
all the more how educational opportunity in this arena is
distributed.



Although there is a clear correlation between educational attainment,
income, and employment rates (see 2022 U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics,
 Other Internet Resources),
 the link between academic achievement as measured on tests and labor
market outcomes has been found to be more attenuated (Bowles, Gintis,
& Osborne 2001). Research has shown that "soft skills"
(e.g., personality traits like tenacity; individual's goals and
preferences) may be more predictive of success than cognitive
abilities measured by test scores (Heckman & Kautz 2012).
Moreover, schooling that is most directly targeted at
employment--vocational education--has a history in the U.S.
of entrenching race and class-based inequalities (e.g., Oakes 1985).
Although the relationship between traditional academic skills and
labor market success may be less significant than previously thought,
and despite the checkered history of vocational education, formal
schooling still has a critical role to play toward equipping
individuals for labor market success on several fronts.



First, students do acquire soft skills in formal school settings. One
study found that student achievement on tests accounts for just 20% of
the effects of educational attainment on earnings (Bowles, Gintis,
& Osborne 2001), which indicates that schools are cultivating
non-cognitive skills that tests do not measure, and that are
consequential in the labor market (Levin 2012). Second, educational
attainment has long been seen to have a signaling function in the
labor market (Spence 1973), whereby employers rely upon job
candidates' educational credentials as a proxy for future
productivity. Educational attainment itself, then, apart from
applicants' demonstration of particular skills, is central to
screening and differentiating candidates. Finally, a college diploma
has become especially consequential in recent years as the income gap
between those with and without one has grown; individuals with a
bachelors degree earn 84% more over their lifetime than those with
just a high school diploma (see Carnevale, Rose & Cheah 2011).
Lesley Jacobs' notion of stakes fairness (2004) underscores the
importance of equality of educational opportunity when it comes to
preparation for the labor market. Ideally, the stakes attached to
education for labor market success would not be nearly as high as they
are now, whereby a winner-takes-all competition for a job can
determine an individual's access to social goods like
healthcare, leisure time, and discretionary income. When the
(non-ideal) stakes are this high, equality of educational opportunity
matters all the more (Jacobs 2010).


### 3.8 Equality of Educational Opportunity for Citizenship



Another important goal for providing educational opportunities is the
development of students' capacities associated with being a good
citizen and maintaining democratic institutions over time (Callan
1997; Galston 2001; Gutmann 1999). It might be argued that just as
equality of opportunity to become a flourishing individual is a matter
of justice, so too is equality of opportunity to develop civic skills,
and to participate effectively in political deliberations.



The structure and appropriate content of civic education is debated
extensively. While some argue that citizenship education can be
narrowly construed so as to not encroach upon individuals'
private commitments, others claim it is a far more demanding
educational endeavor. A key part of this debate is the extent to which
education requires the cultivation of autonomy, and if does, the
nature of the autonomy that is required. Some claim that since some
groups in pluralistic democracies reject the idea of an autonomous
life, education for autonomy cannot be imposed upon them even for
civic purposes, and so education should not entail the cultivation of
individual autonomy (Galston 1989). Rawls' own solution to the
potential clash between civic education for autonomy and
individuals' private commitments is to advocate only a limited
form of autonomy, political autonomy, which "leaves untouched
all kinds of doctrines--religious, metaphysical, and moral"
and yields a relatively thin civic education (Rawls 2005: 375). Others
take issue with this view, arguing that civic education requires an
encompassing form of autonomy that has unavoidable spillover effects
into the private sphere of individuals' lives, and that may
clash with some religious convictions (Callan 1997; Gutmann 1995; see
also Arneson & Shapiro 1996, for a discussion of *Wisconsin v.
Yoder* (1972), a U.S. Supreme Court case about religious
exemptions from compulsory education).



Another dimension of ongoing debates about equality in the realm of
civic education concerns the scope of the community for which we are
educating students to become members. Is the right unit of analysis a
particular nation state or the global community? If it is a particular
nation state, how can we cultivate in students a sense of their
national identity and the disposition to respect their state's
institutions and laws (and to advocate reform when needed), while also
making them sensitive to what they owe non-citizens as a matter of
justice? A key component of this debate is whether students should
receive a patriotic civic education--that is, one that
prioritizes shoring up their allegiance to their state over their
capacity to reflect critically upon its potential shortcomings.
Galston (1989) has notably argued that students need a civic education
that is more rhetorical than rational, while a number of liberal
theorists have criticized his view on grounds of democratic
legitimacy, its status-quo bias, and the related possibility of
ossifying existing inequalities (e.g., Brighouse 1998; Callan 1997;
see also the related entry on
 civic education).
 On the other hand, if we instead have a cosmopolitan view of civic
education and aim to cultivate "citizens of the world"
(e.g., Nussbaum & Cohen 1996), what are the relevant capacities
that need to be made effective? There is no world state for students
to participate in.



Whatever one believes about the appropriate scope and content of civic
education, a pressing issue is students' extremely uneven access
to educational opportunities that prepare them for participatory
citizenship. Meira Levinson's work on the "civic
achievement gap" highlights this corollary to the much-more
discussed achievement gap and underscores vast inequalities across
student groups in terms of what youth know about how government works,
and their ability to participate effectively in civic life (Levinson
2012). These low rates of participation and engagement also have
consequences for how the interests of the poor are treated. Indeed,
even if one rejects equality of opportunity in this domain, there is
ample evidence that many societies are not doing enough to enable
their poorer and less educated citizens to effectively and competently
participate in public life.


### 3.9 Equality and Adequacy in the Distribution of Educational Opportunities



A longstanding debate in the literature juxtaposes the view that we
should prioritize equality in the distribution of educational
opportunities with the view that an "adequacy" approach is
the right one (on this debate, see Reich 2013). Those who advocate the
equality view may insist on equal outputs (i.e., educational outcomes,
like the mastery of particular skills) or inputs (i.e., educational
resources, like equal per pupil funding or qualified teachers). The
adequacy view, by contrast, is seen as holding that what matters most
is meeting a specified educational threshold.



In the context of school finance litigation in the U.S., advocates
often invoke these two distributive ideals together rather than
regarding them as being at odds (Rebell 2009: 21-22; Ryan 2008:
1232-1238). Although most school finance litigation in the U.S.
today is pursued from an adequacy framework given its greater
political viability, litigators often make comparative claims about
students' educational opportunities to bolster their case.
Conversely in contexts where lawyers pursue equality claims, they
frequently appeal to a conception of educational quality (e.g.,
achieving literacy, numeracy, and civic skills) to anchor their
claims, and to avoid the leveling-down problem whereby equality is
achieved by making everyone worse off, without regard for the
realization of particular educational goals.



Some philosophical work has similarly undercut the sharp
equality/adequacy distinction and shows how the two ideals are closely
intertwined in the pursuit of educational justice. These approaches
(e.g., Satz 2007; Anderson 2007) argue that adequacy in education has
a relative and comparative component because the educational threshold
depends on the knowledge and skills that others have, and so it is
necessarily a moving target. For example, what it takes to serve on a
jury, or to have an adequate opportunity for college, depends on the
knowledge and skill levels of others. This "relational"
approach to adequacy can respond to one of the strongest concerns
proponents of equality raise: that because many of the benefits of
education are positional, which is to say, their value depends upon
one's position relative to others, equality is the right
distributive principle for educational opportunities. The meritocratic
distribution of jobs, where the most qualified candidate is appointed
(rather than the individual who is merely well-qualified), ensures
that positionality is decisive in many cases. Conceptions of adequacy
that are attentive to relevant comparative claims can address this
issue and thereby deflate the tension between adequacy and equality
approaches to distributing educational opportunities.



However one interprets equality of educational of opportunity, a
number of important challenges face anyone who believes that the ideal
is a crucial component of a fair and just society. Several of these
challenges are philosophical in nature. For instance, one can ask
whether certain values (e.g., respecting family autonomy) compete with
the demands of equality of opportunity in education in ways that trump
or are trumped by concerns about educational equality. One can also
ask whether equal educational opportunity requires affirmative action,
and what it may require for students with disabilities and special
educational needs. One can accept equality of educational opportunity
with respect to some goods and adequacy of educational opportunity
with respect to others (Callan 2016). There are other challenges that
are not philosophical but practical, such as how we can convince
policymakers to allocate sufficient funds to meet students'
educational needs, and how we might increase public support for the
ideal of equality of educational opportunity more generally.


## 4. Equality of Educational Opportunity's Tensions with Other Values


### 4.1 Education and the Family



Family background has long been recognized as a source of significant
inequalities. Even before we consider that children have quite
different personalities and needs, inequality in family wealth and
differences in family priorities and wield influence over a
child's prospects in the labor market, in civic participation,
and in overall well-being. Although the number of parents who choose
to pay tuition to have their children educated in private schools may
be relatively small, purchasing elite private schooling can result in
compounding advantages for some students (and thus relative
disadvantages for others). Only about 10% of primary and secondary
students in the U.S. attend private schools (see NCES's the
Condition of Education 2016 in
 Other Internet Resources),
 while students who attended private secondary schools have comprised
nearly 30% or more of matriculating classes at some highly selective
American universities in recent years (see, for example, online
profiles of the 2016 freshman class at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale
listed in
 Other Internet Resources).
 Students at some public schools may also suffer more immediate
disadvantages from the absence of the positive peer effects of being
in a school with higher achieving students and more engaged parents.
Smaller class sizes, more highly qualified teachers, and more
extra-curricular opportunities may enable private school students to
benefit from the compounding advantages of greater success in the
college admissions process and subsequent labor market. And since
employment opportunities and elite college places are scarce goods
that are closely linked to other benefits in health, wealth, and
overall well-being, these inequalities can be highly
consequential.



While some of these inequalities might be remedied by social policies
that address employment practices, gender and racial inequality, and
wealth inequality, we have reasons to think that some inequality in
opportunity will remain in a just society simply because parents
should be able to treat their children differently from other
people's children in ways that are to their children's
advantage. For example, a parent may read bedtime stories to his
children but if he does he does not also need to read them to other
children, even if a failure to read to everyone exacerbates
inequality. There are limits to what the state can do without
intruding on the life of the family. At the same time, concern for
mitigating inequality that is rooted in familial relations has to
grapple with the fact that different parenting styles have value as
well as downsides, and that the middle-class norm of trying to
maximize children's potential ("concerted
cultivation"; Lareau 2011) is no exception in terms of having
certain disadvantages for children.



There are several possible approaches to the conflict between equal
educational opportunity and the family. One approach subordinates our
concern for equality of educational opportunity to our concern with
the family. To support this view we might try to argue that the goods
of family life are especially weighty, or, that as a matter of value
pluralism, the state cannot impose complete uniformity on childrearing
practices. Conversely, we could subordinate our concern for the family
to our concern with equality of educational opportunity. If this were
to happen, however, we could end up abolishing the family as we know
it, since the family and partiality run contrary to equal opportunity.
One cannot, it seems, have the family and have perfect equality of
opportunity. Plato famously advocated raising children in common
within communities in *The Republic* (though not out of concern
for equality). But most philosophers, including Rawls, believe that
abolishing the family is far too high a price to pay for equality
(this is discussed in Munoz-Darde 1999; Brighouse & Swift
2009; Schoeman 1980; Schrag 1976; see also Miller 2009 on different
conceptions of equality of opportunity and how the family fits within
them).



Alternatively, we might think that some careful weighing of the values
at stake is required. For instance, we might think that only some of
the demands of familial partiality, those related to intimacy such as
reading bedtime stories, are sufficient to outweigh concern for
equality of educational opportunity. Other aspects of familial
partiality that appear to be unconnected to intimacy, such as paying
tuition for private schools, would not be justified. This view would
enjoin us to equalize children's educational opportunities
whenever we can, without sacrificing the goods central to the family
(Brighouse & Swift 2014). Yet it can be very difficult in practice
to determine whether an advantage parents provide their child is
constitutive of the family or not.


### 4.2 Disability



Individuals with cognitive and physical disabilities have been
marginalized, denied resources, and even denied an education. Can a
conception of equality of educational opportunity accommodate those
with cognitive and physical disabilities? Some critics claim that
theories of justice focus unduly on meeting the demands of reciprocity
and cooperation as a pre-condition to equal opportunity and other
demands of justice, and in doing so, exclude some individuals with
disabilities from those entitlements. Some argue that we need new
theories (Kittay 1999; Barnes 2016) while others argue that existing
theories and approaches can be applied to or extended to include
individuals with disabilities (Stark 2013; Robeyns 2006; Brighouse
2001). In education, treating individuals with disabilities the same
as those without does not always suffice to treat all equally, for
disabilities sometimes give rise to special needs and requirements and
this raises challenges for 'inclusion' (Warnock 2005). In
order to avoid these challenges it seems that we might need to endorse
differential treatment, which can lead to stigma and division and has
been associated with educational segregation. This gives rise to what
has been called the "dilemma of difference" and pertains
to decisions about whether students with disabilities should be
educated in the same class as students without disabilities. Placing
disabled children in mainstream schools or classes may lead to
bullying, as Mary Warnock (2005) has noted, but placing disabled
children in separate settings may further entrench the wide-spread
social stigma associated with disability, even when there is much that
can be done to ensure disability is not an obstacle to learning.
Further debates focus on the extent to which (at least some of) the
disadvantages of disability may be detached from the disability itself
and the extent to which they are attached only in virtue of social
organization or social attitudes, which we could and should alter. For
instance, if the dominant modes of communication in our society were
sign-based rather than spoken, perhaps deafness would not be
considered a disability. Likewise, where braille translations are
readily available, the blind do not face a disability with respect to
reading (Sparrow 2005). In the case of education, the design of the
school or the curriculum can determine whether a disability is an
obstacle to learning. For some discussion of this debate see Terzi
2005.



Disability may be thought to pose problems for various conceptions of
equality of educational opportunity and can strengthen well-known
objections. For example, it poses problems for those who endorse a
meritocratic allocation of advantageous positions, such as FEO. If one
of the primary goals of an education system is to ensure fair
competition for jobs, many people with disabilities will likely face
greater and even insurmountable obstacles to becoming the most
meritorious candidate. Recall that FEO requires equal prospects for
the equally naturally talented and ambitious. Some of those with
disabilities do not have similar or equal natural talent with others
vying for opportunities, even if these differences could be
compensated for through education. Meritocratic equality of
opportunity also appears to neglect some people with disabilities, by
interpreting merit in terms of inborn potentials. FEO and meritocratic
equality of opportunity are consistent with providing very low or even
no educational opportunities to some cognitively disabled persons, but
that hardly seems like an acceptable outcome. Adequacy accounts may
also struggle to explain what to do when disabilities are so severe
that individuals cannot achieve adequate educational levels, or do so
only at enormous cost. If an adequate education involved at least
acquiring a high school diploma, it is not possible for some
cognitively impaired persons to reach this level. Since the focus of
adequacy is on achieving that level, and these people cannot do so, it
appears that when educational adequacy is set at these levels no
entitlement to education for the cognitively disabled can be derived
from it. This sort of example puts a lot of pressure on accounts of
adequacy to explain at what cost adequacy is worth pursuing, and also
challenge those who deny that native ability is relevant to equality
of opportunity.



One way to avoid such outcome would be to supplement these views of
equality or adequacy of educational opportunity with other principles.
For example, it might be held that we owe some educational resources
even to the severely cognitively disabled not on grounds of equality
of opportunity but on grounds of humanity.


### 4.3 The Target of Equal Educational Opportunity: Individuals or Groups?



Opportunities belong to agents. However, when we are concerned with
equality of opportunity we may be concerned that each individual has
the same opportunities or that certain groups (classified by race,
gender, socio-economic class, sexuality or religion) have the same
opportunities. In other words, our concern may be that people's
opportunities are not affected by their membership of some
disadvantaged group rather than being concerned that each individual
has equal opportunity within groups. Imagine two societies. In society
*A*, all those who gain entrance to selective colleges on the
basis of test scores are white. In society *B*, all those who
gain entrance on the basis of test scores are white or non-white in
proportionate to their percentages in the overall population. Should
we care about whether we are in society *A* or *B*? If
our concern is with individuals alone, then so long as our conception
of equality of opportunity is met, then there is no difference between
society *A* and *B*. Of course, we may suspect that
society *A* violates our conception of equality of opportunity.
But suppose that it does not.



Do we have any reason to favor a college admissions policy that moves
us from *A* to *B*? Those who advocate for affirmative
action in admissions argue that we have reason to depart from a
color-blind standard. Some of those arguments appeal to the
illegitimacy of the standards used (e.g., tests scores), which critics
say are biased. Others argue that we should expect to see equality of
outcomes with respect to relevant social groups. For example, John
Roemer (1998) defends a conception of equality of opportunity
according to which members of groups that have been subordinated
(women, racial minorities) should have the same probabilities of
achieving success as the members of the dominant group. This is
because he thinks the obstacles these groups face should be the same
and if we assume that they have equal distributions of talent within
them, then different outcomes means there are different obstacles.
Roemer uses the example of smoking to illustrate this. Smoking rates
vary by social class: the poorer you are, the more likely it is that
you will smoke. On Roemer's view, this means that it is harder
for a poor person to stop smoking than a wealthy person. So we should
not penalize a poor person who smokes to the same extent that we
penalize a wealthy person. Of course, which social groups should be
included in this exercise is controversial. Conservatives and liberals
differ as to whether individuals face different obstacles simply by
virtue of their group membership.



A different argument for moving to society *B* is given by
Glenn Loury (1987) who argues that the dynamic effects of a society
like *A* would prevent poor but talented minorities from
achieving equality of educational opportunity because they would lack
access to the social networks upon which jobs and other opportunities
depend. In society *A*, disadvantages would cluster. Because
equality of opportunity does not, as we have seen, easily extend to
the private sphere of family and intimate associations, it is
compatible with the continued practice of racial discrimination in
such practices, even when there is legal, formal equality.



Loury thus sees a role for preferential policies in higher education
that would move us from a society like *A* to a society like
*B*. One of the more controversial reforms associated with
higher education and equality of opportunity is affirmative action,
which reserves preferential treatment for historically disadvantaged
groups. Affirmative action has been criticized by those who think that
merit, and not race or class, should be the only criterion for
selecting college applicants. Others argue that it can lead to the
unintended stigmatization of members of disadvantaged groups who
attend college as not deserving of their place. However, this is to
forget that opportunities to develop merit are themselves unfairly
distributed between groups historically. Notwithstanding this
response, affirmative action remains a controversial response to a
very difficult social problem (Guinier 2016).


## 5. Conclusion



This entry has provided analysis of key positions in debates about
equality of educational opportunity. We began by describing the
reasons for being concerned about equality in this arena and then
surveyed debates about the value and distribution of such
opportunities. As the above discussion highlights, the realization of
the ideal of equality of educational opportunity may be frustrated by
competing conceptions of what equality itself entails, and also by
other important values that are in tension with equalizing education
opportunities (e.g., respecting family autonomy). Social scientific
advances in recent years have clarified our understanding of the
mechanisms behind children's unequal access to educational
opportunities, and the consequences of those inequalities for social
mobility (e.g., Chetty et al. 2014; Duncan & Murnane 2011). This
knowledge enables policymakers to target interventions to areas that
will be most impactful (e.g., growing recognition of the importance of
early childhood education). But value tensions of the sort highlighted
in this entry will persist, and they warrant ongoing attention by
philosophers as our understanding of the causes and consequences of
educational inequalities sharpens.