As a crude rule of thumb, you could think of the individual good as “client satisfaction” with the educational process and result. The social good could be defined in terms of the desired social outcomes of education – the degree to which the educational systems as a whole helped create a prosperous economy, a tolerant civil society, and a knowledgeable polity. The individual idea of fairness and justice could focus on whether individuals have equal access, whether they are treated fairly, whether they get what they are entitled to have, and that their individual rights and privacy are protected in the schooling process. The aggregate idea of social justice could be conceived in terms of the degree to which the system provided equal access to quality educational services; the degree to which the system not only vindicated individual rights to education, but also fairly imposed the burdens associated with those rights; and the degree to which the educational systems supported significant upward mobility in the society as an embodiment of the ideal of equal opportunity. Note that the effects produced and observed by the system at the individual and social level, can also be evaluated by individuals, and by the society as a whole. Individuals who use the educational system – the customers or clients of the system – can evaluate their own personal experience in consuming educational services. They can compare what they get from the system in terms of their subjective views of what they want, what they think they need, and what they think they are entitled to. But other individuals in the society who are engaged as individual citizens and taxpayers as well as educational consumers, can view the system in terms of its effects on individuals other than themselves. That is, they could hold up the experiences they have as consumers or observers and supporters of individual educational experiences and decide to what degree the system provides to individuals what they as individuals think a good and just society would supply to individuals. Finally, the society as a whole – that is, all individuals affected in some way by the current operations of the educational system (which includes citizens and taxpayers as well as the recipients of educational services), as they express their views through their elected representatives and the messy processes of democratic governance) – can also have a collective, public view of what constitutes a good and just educational system. This is particularly important and decisive when public money and authority are being spent. Just as individuals can hold views about what is good and just at the individual and collective level, so the body politic assembled into a collective public arbiter of value can hold views about what is good and just at the individual and social level. When looking at the individual users of educational services (provided at public expense), they can decide to take individual customer views of what the customer wants seriously and provide for that, or they can limit their ideas about what customers should get to what they seem to need and deserve – not just what they want. When looking at the aggregate dimensions value being produced, they might be interested in keeping the costs to taxpayers low as an important practical goal, but also the desire to give special support to those children who have special needs the extra help they need.

######## Principle 3: Recognizing and Valuing Variation in the System