Implementation of the "Brown" decision has failed to provide the equal education opportunity promise in 1954. The Supreme Court's 1955 decision, which sent school desegregation cases to the district courts, was vague and provided desegregation opponents time to organize a campaign that threatened secession and succeeded in delaying any meaningful compliance for at least 10 years. More progress might have been made if the Court had expressly deferred desegregation relief for a fairly long period. In that case, parents and community members might have been organized to effectively implement the court-ordered equal money and control mandates. Moreover, our present concerns about equal educational opportunity and fears that integrated schools provide an inferior educational quality, might have been avoided. Instead, the Court's actions have led in many instances to black parents rejecting plans calling for more racial balance in favor of policies that promise more control and more equitable distribution of educational resources. The barriers of continuing white resistance, a less than supportive Supreme Court, and the growing concentration of most poorer blacks in large urban areas, render preposterous any continuing effort to gain meaningful compliance with "Brown" through reliance on racial balance plans. The chances for further progress in the 1980s lie with those who have decided that the better route to educational quality may lie in those schools where, at least, black children and their parents are not treated as strangers. (KH)