Equity and Education: Philosophies and Measurement

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyse the statistical indicators used in research on equity in education in order to show the philosophical assumptions underlying these indicators. To illustrate this, we take Spain’s skills indicators in PISA. While equity is an aspirational characteristic of education systems, we must bear in mind that what is understood as equity depends on what is understood as a just society. This question can only be answered from a normative perspective. We will show that quantitative research is often restricted to a few indicators of distributional equity, and thus provides a limited view of equity. It is therefore necessary to incorporate more indicators that reflect other ways of understanding equity, but to do so knowing from what assumptions we incorporate them. We will now review the value assumptions of the statistical indicators most frequently used in the debate on distributional equity in education. We start with the debate around Rawls and distributive equity. We will look at the criticisms made by non-egalitarian liberals, utilitarians and Marxists, mainly. As a result, we will show the parameters by which we can evaluate educational equity according to each of these schools of thought.