Great Society Programs

This entry describes the Great Society programs of the 1960s and looks at their effects on education and on other aspects of society and their implications for educational measurement and evaluation. The Great Society programs constitute an unprecedented set of federally funded educational, social, and environmental programs that were enacted during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (1964–1968). These programs were intended to eliminate poverty and racial injustice and to ensure that the country’s systems of political, educational, employment, and health opportunities were open to all Americans. Many of the Great Society programs have endured until the present time, although they have gone through numerous revisions over the decades.

The policies and initiatives of Great Society programs have shaped education in the United States for over half a century. Among the most ambitious of the Great Society programs were those focused on improving educational access and quality for all children and youth, particularly for those from high-poverty communities. The signature piece of Great Society legislation in the education domain was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965.

The centerpiece of the original ESEA was its Title I, which provided extra funding to schools nationwide that served high concentrations of children and youth from low-income families and neighborhoods. In the same year that ESEA was passed, Head Start was launched and the Higher Education Act was passed, providing scholarships and low-interest loans to any young person who wanted to pursue higher education. The 2015 incarnation of the ESEA is the Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The Great Society programs also reached into many other aspects of citizens’ lives. The multiple strands of this grand policy-making endeavor include the following, each presented with an illustration of relevant legislation that was passed during Johnson’s presidency.