Harry Brighouse

Full privatisation of schools would involve states abstaining from providing, funding or regulating schools. I argue that full privatisation would, in most circumstances, worsen social injustice in schooling. I respond to James Tooley's critique of my own arguments for funding and regulation and markets. I argue that even his principle of educational adequacy requires a certain level of state involvement and demonstrate that his arguments against a principle of educational equality fail. I show, furthermore, that he relies on an over-optimistic attitude regarding the operation of markets, which involves a failure to appreciate the diversity of quality in states, and that he misreads the evidence concerning private schooling in some developing countries.

Defends a theory of social justice for education from within an egalitarian version of liberalism. The theory involves a strong commitment to educational equality, and to the idea that children's rights include a right to personal autonomy. The book argues that school reform must always be evaluated from the perspective of social justice and applies the theory, in particular, to school choice proposals. It looks at the parental choice schemes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in England and Wales, and argues that they fall short of the requirements of justice, but that not all such schemes must do so. It elaborates an abstract voucher scheme that would combine choice with justice, and offers ways by which actual choice‐based reform can be modified to meet the requirements of justice.

Neutralist defenses of liberalism fail because they cannot account for essential features of an acceptable liberal theory: a firm guarantee for a sphere of individual liberty, an account of our interest in being able to revise our moral commitments, a wide range of applicability, and the possibility of legitimate government in the face of rejection by unreasonable citizens. A liberalism based on the value of autonomy can address the problems which motivate neutralists, while succeeding in providing for the essential features just mentioned.

The paper argues that there is no fundamental incompatibility between the use of vouchers and managed market mechanisms in the distribution of education und the principled aims of egalitarian educational policy. It takes those aims to be equality of opportunity, education for autonomy, and democratic education, and shows in each case how a voucher scheme could accommodate the aim. It explains why a judiciously designed voucher scheme may constitute a more politically feasible method of achieving central egalitarian goals than attempts to improve public provision, but does not endorse the use of voucher schemes.