This website was part of a larger project, housed at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and funded by the Spencer Foundation, to examine the relationship between the ideal of equality of opportunity and the public provision of education.
About the project
The purpose of this website is to serve as a resource for academics, college and graduate students, teachers, school administrators, and interested citizens to learn about philosophical debates about equality of opportunity, and what these debates mean for the public provision of education. The site provides an annotated bibliography of major works, topically organized into three sections, about equality of opportunity and its application to education. The fourth section offers a list of major court cases in the US that have addressed different aspects of equality of opportunity in education, with links to the decisions and notes about the rulings.
Section 1: The general idea of equality of opportunity
This section introduces the general concept of equality of opportunity and contrasts it with an alternative principle, equality of outcome.
Section 3: Applications to Education
This section summarizes some of the major debates around the application of conceptions of equality of opportunity to educational institutions and educational policy.