Few advocates for education reform and school choice talk about, or even remember, the Alum Rock experiment, which had its birth in the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. But the death of Sargent Shriver gives us a chance to talk about a cause that in many ways is a legacy of the War on Poverty.

Shriver was one of the principal architects of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and the Office of Economic Opportunity was his creation. While the OEO had a short life – it was abolished during the Nixon administration in 1973 – many of its antipoverty programs exist today, including Head Start and Job Corps.

What tends to escape notice in the coverage of his death is that the office also embarked on the nation’s first widespread experiment in school choice, more particularly with school vouchers. OEO leaders were looking for ways to make school systems more responsive to the needs of low-income families, and a team led by social scientist Christopher Jencks in 1969 undertook a project that would work to enlist school systems in a field test of vouchers.

Only the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District near San Jose, Calif., agreed to participate (Districts in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Gary, Ind., showed initial interest before their respective school boards voted against participation). But the school district entered into the experiment cautiously, volunteering to be the educational guinea pig for the OEO but agreeing only to choice within public schools. Private and parochial schools were prohibited from the plan, and the instructional staff was guaranteed continued employment.

The Rand Corporation summed up the birth of the plan for the National Institute of Education: (more…)