Today America marks the 55^th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall's historic victory in Brown v. Board of Education. If Marshall were alive, however, he would urge us to stop celebrating 1954 and start accepting responsibility for our complicity in the creation of a "separate but equal" education apartheid system – with one method of instruction for the poor and another for the privileged.

In theory, the Brown decision represents the most hopeful threads of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. "In the field of public education," the unanimous Court wrote, "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," and the opportunity to learn "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." The Chicago Defender proclaimed May 17, 1954, as "the beginning of the end of the dual society in American life and the system of segregation that supports it." Marshall himself remembered feeling "so happy I was numb."

In practice, integrated schools today remain as much of a dream now as they were 50 years ago, and the subject of segregation has all but disappeared from the national conversation about education reform. Worse still, many of the newest and most promising schools in our nation's cities are actually increasing the racial stratification of young people and communities – not lessening it.

Providing "separate but equal" facilities, it seems, has once again become an acceptable justification for allowing an inequitable schooling system to continue. In this system, some communities – mostly white – spend more on their schools because they have a deeper tax base, while others – mostly non-white – have to make do with less. The wealthier schools are filled with passionate, experienced educators, while the poorer ones are flooded with passionate, inexperienced rookies. And while one child is being taught that the key to success is finding the right (multiple-choice) answer to other people's questions, another is learning that success comes from finding his voice and discovering his rightful place in the world.

Which child is more likely to do well in life, and in a democratic society?

The Court thought it was bringing an end to this inequity in 1954. But legal changes tend to outpace social changes, and so in 1973 the Court was again asked to intervene, this time when a group of poor Texas parents claimed that their state's tolerance of the wide disparity in school resources violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment. A state court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed.

Gone from the Court's language was its concern, expressed eloquently in 1954, that separating children from their peers solely because of their race "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." Instead, Justice Potter Stewart wrote simply that while the Texas school system "can fairly be described as chaotic and unjust . . . it does not follow that this system violates the Constitution."

Justice Lewis Powell agreed: "Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution." If it were, Powell conceded, "virtually every State will not pass muster."

For Justice Marshall, a sitting member of the Court he had stood before two decades prior, that was precisely the point. "The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed," he wrote, even though "no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society's well being."

Marshall understood that without equal access to a high-quality public education, democracy doesn't work. "Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights," he explained. "Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution."

After so many years and so little real change, something new – perhaps even something drastic – needs to be done.

What if we took away the legal ambiguity that resulted in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision? What if we made, as our nation's 28^th Constitutional Amendment, the guarantee of an equal opportunity to learn? Is that the game-changer we need to make the promise of Brown a reality, 55 years later?