Analysis of changes in federal education policy in the 1960s, based on archival research and other sources, suggests a reinterpretation of the causes of the success or failure of the new federal programs. A review of the literature on these "Great Society" educational policies finds that most authors feel the policies sprang from a coalescence of legislative, racial, religious, and presidential factors in the mid-1960s. Archival evidence on that period, however, points to three further factors: the activist role of the federal budget bureau on task forces formulating educational policy; federal economic advisors' call for an expansionary budget in 1965; and President Lyndon Johnson's practice of proposing new Great Society programs while underfunding the old ones. The new policies also created "iron triangles" of educational interest groups that helped replace old federal education bureaucracies with new ones. Based on a perspective from the 1980s, an evaluation of the Great Society educational programs concludes that most have worked poorly, been underfunded and over-ambitious, and tended to resegregate some of their beneficiaries. Evaluation from an even longer perspective, however, may show that the programs worked. (Author/RW)