Evans Clinchy (2001) stated that the Supreme CourtÆs decision in Brown v. Board of Education was the single greatest recognition in the twentieth century that the parents and the children of the United States do have educational rights. The two important issues resolved in this landmark Supreme Court decision were: 1) segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities even when tangible facilities might be equal; and 2) where a state has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available on truly equal terms (Clinchy, 2001).
Brown was argued on December 9, 1952, reargued on December 8, 1953, and decided on May 17, 1954 by a vote of 9 to 0. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren essentially held that the Jim Crow laws impacting upon public education were unconstitutional and represented a denial of equality and basic constitutional rights for selected minority groups (Hall, 1992). After Brown, AmericaÆs public schools were required to begin what would be a long and as yet incomplete process of desegregating all public schools throughout the United States. The question of whether or not the decision in Brown has led to true educational equality is as yet unanswered.
An integrated America would ideally be a country that was colorblind and in which all vestiges of racial segregation were a thing of the past. While public schools throughout the United States no longer represent de jure segregation policies, the fact of the matter is that de facto segregation continues to exist. This is a result of residential segregation and the inequities in the distribution of the economic and human resources needed to provide truly equal educational opportunities.
No observer of the American public education system can escape
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