Chapter 1: Equity through Differentiation: The Paradoxical Quest to Make Education Equal for Everyone by Making It Different for Everyone

Most educational reform over the past century has been built upon the goal of sameness. The pursuit of integration rests on the assumption of equity being best achieved by ensuring that students of differing races, genders, or socioeconomic levels are educated in the same classrooms. The state-bystate funding reform aims to ensure that students have access to the same resources despite differences in localized economic conditions.

Yet the dominant educational reform movement of the 21st century— the embrace of school choice—is built upon the practice of difference. A choice among various schools can only be a choice, after all, if there is something meaningfully different among them. Both the educational reform theory of school choice and the market theory of education are premised on the assumption that today’s schools can be improved and educational opportunity can be made considerably more equitable through a system of schools that are meaningfully different from one another (Hill & Campbell, 2011).