For Martin, the right to free higher education may be claimed only by those ready and willing pursue autonomy supporting higher education. The unready and unwilling, among whom may be counted carers, disabled, and devout, are excluded. This is unjust. I argue that this injustice follows from a tension between three elements of Martin's argument:…

My contribution to this special issue engages with Michael Sandel's "The Tyranny of Meritocracy" and its significance to the academic conversation about meritocracy and its discontents. Specifically, I highlight Sandel's diagnosis of the rise of populism and his proposed remedy for the 'tyranny of merit'. First, building on Menno ter…

The last few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest among both scholars and public intellectuals over issues associated with distributive justice and its gravitational orbit of concepts, including the idea of merit and the adjacent vision of a meritocratic society. Nevertheless, despite its centrality for conceptions of equality of…

Secondary education schools in the United States routinely distribute differential educational provisions to students through a widely implemented tracking system. This article aims to show that this tracking system is unjust. It begins with a characterization of the tracking system as it is typically implemented in the United States, and its…

Accounts of inclusive education that locate the concept of inclusion within theories of individual rights face two problems. The first problem, called 'the dilemma of identity', assumes that on one hand we need communities to develop and ensure a sense of identity and a feeling of social inclusion, whereas on the other hand, inclusion is only…

Two appealing principles of educational distribution--equality and sufficiency--are comparatively assessed. The initial point of comparison is the distribution of civic educational goods. One reason to favor equality in educational distribution rather than sufficiency is the elimination of undeserved positional advantage in access to labor…

The United States considers educating all students to a threshold of adequate outcomes to be a central goal of educational justice. The No Child Left Behind Act introduced evidence-based policy and accountability protocols to ensure that all students receive an education that enables them to meet adequacy standards. Unfortunately, evidence-based…

The ideal of equality of opportunity plays an important role in contemporary social and political discourse, and it is one of the few ideals which most people, across the political spectrum, accept. In this article, I argue that the seemingly widespread agreement about the value of equal opportunity is more apparent than real. I distinguish…

This paper reveals how equal educational opportunities, equal job opportunities and equality of opportunity for welfare are related to each other, and how they are related to other demands for justice. There are several important objections to the emphasis on equal educational opportunities. Nevertheless, this paper shows that demanding equal…

This article articulates a framework suitable for use when making decisions about education policy. Decision makers should establish what the feasible options are and evaluate them in terms of their contribution to the development, and distribution, of educational goods in children, balanced against the negative effect of policies on important…

In this article, I argue (1) affirmative action diverts attention from more urgent needs of racial justice in education--better quality K-12 education, and better quality and more accessible public higher education; (2) the increasing wealth of students at affirmative action institutions is a sign of diminished quality of those students compared…

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…

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…

Beginning in the 1970s, many school US school districts reallocated their already scarce resources from local schools to specially created magnet schools. Many of these magnet schools have some sort of entrance exam, portfolio, or audition requirement that students must pass in order to gain admission. These selective magnet schools are predicated…

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…