Should charter schools be required to enroll students labeled special needs at the same rate as local school districts, that is, educate their "fair share"? Or is it reasonable for a charter school to counsel special education students to go elsewhere, if another school would be a better fit? If "fair share" requirements are…

This article looks at charter schools from the perspective of distributive justice. It suggests three principles of distributive justice that should be satisfied by schools: the adequacy principle, the equity principle, and the communicative principle. "It also sketches the justice argument for charter schools and uses the three principles to…

In this essay, the author reviews "Education Reform in New York City: Ambitious Change in the Nation's Most Complex School System," by Jennifer A. O'Day, Catherine S. Bitter, and Louis Gomez. The book under review explores a larger set of issues, and some time has passed. But many of the issues studied remain relevant and the consistent…

When public schools opened in New York City in September 2003 amid reports of widespread classroom overcrowding, parents, educators, and policymakers demanded an explanation. There, at the ready, was Michael Winerip, the education columnist for the "New York Times." The crowding, wrote Winerip in the first of a series of hard-hitting…