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We gratefully reply to our five commentators, responding to their criticisms and comments under the following headings: parochialism and curriculum; rationality and truth; production and distribution; perfectionism, decision-making and disagreement; adultism and parents' interests; non-consequential educational goods; and self-education. [For Brighouse et al's "Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making," see ED592596.]

In this article, based on their book Educational Goods: Values, Evidence and Decision Making, Harry Brighouse, Helen Ladd, Susanna Loeb, and Adam Swift encourage education decision makers to give careful thought to the values that underlie the data they collect and use to inform policy. Rather than basing decisions entirely on what improves academic achievement, the authors call for attention to a wider array of values, which they call educational goods. These include the capacities to function in the labor market, to participate effectively in the democratic process, to make autonomous judgments about key life decisions such as occupation or religion, to develop healthy interpersonal relationships, to seek personal fulfilment, and to treat others with respect and dignity. Thinking in terms of these values can broaden the conversation about education priorities and bring clarity to decisions involving trade-offs and conflicting aims.

Educational equality is one important value of justice in education, but it is only one. This article makes a case for a meritocratic principle of educational equality and shows that certain arguments against that principle do not justify rejecting it. It would be wrong to, for the sake of educational equality, undermine the value of the family or economic growth in ways that damage the prospects for flourishing of the least advantaged. But insofar as educational equality can be improved without harming those other values, it should be pursued; in practice, educational equality can be pursued effectively within the limits set by those values.

Summarising the arguments of "How Not to Be A Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent" (Routledge Falmer 2003), the article discusses three questions. The first is whether parents who disapprove of elite private schools to such an extent that they would vote to ban them are acting hypocritically or inconsistently with their principles if they send their children to such schools. My answer is that they need not be. The second is whether parents should have the option of sending their children to such schools; whether those schools should be allowed to exist. My answer is that they should not. The third is whether, given that such schools do exist, parents are justified in sending their children to them. My answer is that in certain circumstances they may be, but that most of those who opt for such schools are not justified in doing so. As long as the state school is "good enough", parents should send their children to that school, even where it would not be as good for their children as would private alternatives. (Contains 1 note.)

I reply to the more philosophical critiques of "How Not to Be a Hypocrite" (2003), published in this volume of "Theory and Research in Education". Against Elizabeth Anderson, I claim that unequal chances are unfair, and unfairness is bad, but acknowledge that its badness can be outweighed by other values. Distinguishing principled from empirical disagreements, I argue that even where rules permitting private schools are justified on productivity grounds, we should still consider those rules to be unfair, and parents who use them to favour their own children to be exceeding the bounds of legitimate partiality. I agree with much of Matthew Clayton's and David Stevens' discussion of the burdens of injustice, but suggest that they underestimate the weight of partial reasons, a weight which may be acknowledged even from the impersonal standpoint. Sympathetic to Colin Macleod's discussion of partiality-constituted goods, I doubt that school choice qualifies as something the personal monitoring of which destroys spontaneity, and offer other reasons why it is worse not to vote for abolition than to send one's child to a private school. I end by distinguishing two ways in which the current choice situation facing affluent parents may be unjust, and explain why "Hypocrite" took a strategic decision to leave that distinction unbroached. (Contains 6 notes.)

Defends the liberal approach to education by diagnosing and correcting the most common reasons people have for rejecting it. Argues that in some cases those reasons are based on a misunderstanding of liberalism, while in others the understanding of liberalism is accurate, but the evaluation of the objection is mistaken. Focus is on the philosophical debate. (Contains 45 references.) (Authors/PKP)