"Rationality" means to conform to the overall development and stability of society and the individual development and needs of social members, and to uniformly allocate educational resources from the dialectical relationship between them.

Educational equity is a historical category, which has different meanings in different countries and historical periods. It is not only a reflection of social reality, but also a transcendence of social reality. It is the unity of social reality and educational ideal, and has specific historical significance, including its historical rationality and historical limitations.

Three levels:

(1) Ensure that everyone enjoys equal rights and obligations to education;

(2) Providing educational opportunities and conditions in relatively equal;

(3) Educational success opportunities and educational effects are relatively equal, that is, after receiving the same level of education, every student can reach a most basic standard, including substantive fairness in students' academic achievements, fairness in education quality and equality at the goal level.

Among them, "ensuring everyone has the opportunity to receive education" is the premise and foundation, "providing education opportunities and conditions in relatively equal" is the further requirement, and it is also the premise of "educational success opportunity" and "educational effect relatively equal".

Generally, these three levels can be summarized as: starting point fairness, process fairness and result fairness.

In addition, the correct understanding of educational equity includes two aspects: the development of educational equity is relative, and the pursuit of educational equity and educational efficiency are unified.

The development of educational equity has certain relativity:

In this world, there is no unrestricted and complete absolute fairness. It must depend on the existence of certain social conditions and be influenced by the development level of social productive forces and people's understanding of the concept of educational equity. Educational fairness in primitive society is a low-level fairness in which all members participate; In slave society and feudal society, education became a privilege and was restricted to a few people, and the children of working people rarely had the right and opportunity to receive formal education; Since the industrial society, education has gradually spread to the public, and people's understanding of educational fairness has gradually experienced fairness from the starting point, fairness in the process to fairness in the result. Therefore, educational equity is an eternal concept pursued by people, and it is also the direction and goal of human struggle.

The multiple meanings of educational equity;

From the subject of educational practice, educational equity can be divided into student equity and teacher equity. Student fairness refers to the problem of treating and evaluating student fairness; Teacher fairness refers to the problem of treating and evaluating teacher fairness.

From the perspective of the process of educational activities, it can be divided into education starting point fairness, process fairness and result fairness. Fairness at the starting point means that everyone has the opportunity to start their own study career regardless of gender, race, origin, economic status, living environment and other conditions. Process fairness means that education treats everyone on the basis of equality in both subjective and objective aspects. The fairness of results means the equality of education quality.

From the point of view that the result of educational fairness is produced by operating according to certain fairness principles, educational fairness can be divided into principle fairness, operation fairness and result fairness. The principle of educational equity is the premise of fair educational results. The fairness of operation needs to rationalize and fix the steps of operation to form a fair procedure, and also needs various forms of supervision mechanisms, supervision institutions and supporting technical means to ensure the fairness of the results.

From whether the subjects of educational practice (educators and educatees) are regarded as different, educational equity can be divided into homogeneous educational equity and heterogeneous educational equity. Homogeneous educational equity refers to ignoring the differences between people and guiding the actual educational activities with the same principles of educational equity. However, the educational equity of difference thinks that everyone is different.

From the perspective of existence and concept, the above is the fairness of existence. In addition, there is also a kind of fairness at the conceptual level, which is a subjective reflection of existing fairness and a value judgment of existing fairness, mainly manifested in the sense of educational fairness, that is, the psychological feeling generated when evaluating fairness.