The Unending Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity

Abstract

This article finds that Brown has not fulfilled its promise of securing equal educational opportunity for black children and that racial discrimination in the nation's public school systems is still the norm. In the great metropolitan areas of the country, demographic factors, segregated housing, neighborhood assignment policies, and school district configurations clustering poor and minority children in school districts separate from the largely white surrounding areas mean that a generation or more of blacks will be educated in racially isolated schools in many of the urban centers of the country. Thus our immediate concern must be to require those racially isolated schools to produce quality education for the black children who must attend them. Educators must take the lead in the fight to make Brown's promise a reality, evaluating and monitoring the educational offerings provided for minority children to determine their quality and sufficiency. Educators should define and conceptualize equal educational opportunity in terms of its educational methodology, form, and content.