Equal educational opportunity and considerations of student interests: the basis on which public schools proceed

• Main Author: Karmel, Joe
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7923

A difficulty in achieving equal educational opportunity in the public school system is that there has been a tendency among educational planners to confuse the notion of equality with that of sameness, to the extent that schools tend to offer identical educational opportunities rather than equal educational opportunities. The promotion of an approach which aims to standardize teaching practices and student programmes, stems from an interpretation of equality which considers that conditions of equal educational opportunity are attained when the same conditions exist for everyone. Lacking in this approach, however, is any consideration of individual student interests, a consideration wherein the intentional striving of students to achieve equal access to the resources that promote academic achievement has essentially been overlooked in the judging of equal educational opportunity.