Nearly 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed separate schools for black and white students, most Americans now believe that blacks have better educational opportunities. But fewer than one in three blacks say opportunities for black children are now on par with those of whites.
In a Gallup poll released Tuesday, 90% of adults agree that black children's educational opportunities have improved since 1954. But only 31% of blacks say black children's options equal those of their white peers; 63% of whites say opportunities are the same.

Overall, among those of both races who believe that blacks have fewer opportunities (38%), about one in three say it's due to discrimination; the rest believe it's because of other factors.

May 17 is the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case. A consolidation of class action cases from four states and the District of Columbia, Brown outlawed legal segregation of public schools, saying "separate but equal" schools for black and white students were inherently unequal. A second decision, in 1955, ordered school districts to integrate "with all deliberate speed."

But 50 years later, integration advocates say schools spent only a few years fulfilling the court's demands, and public schools in many areas remain segregated by race and class.

Federal and state statistics show an achievement gap that separates white and minority students.

"Most whites believe opportunities are evenly distributed, but this simply is at odds with reality," says Ross Wiener of The Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates for low-income and urban students. "In every way we can measure, it is clear that black students get less than white students from public education."

Wiener and others say schools serving minority students have, on average, fewer qualified teachers, more staff turnover, less challenging curricula and, in many cases, poorer funding per pupil.

The poll finds that adults of both races believe setting high standards and encouraging family involvement would help black students. Few, about 1%, say more student integration would help.

The poll also found that 28% have never heard of Thurgood Marshall, the attorney who argued the Brown case and later became the nation's first black Supreme Court Justice. Even among blacks, 19% say they've never heard of Marshall, who died in 1993.

The phone survey of 3,017 adults was done from January to March, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.