The Career Opportunities Program (COP), an initiative of the U.S. Office of Education, ended on June 30, 1976. COP attempted to provide opportunity for indigenous community residents working as paraprofessional teacher aides in the nation's low-income and rural schools to advance with the education profession through training and merit and, ultimately, to improve the learning of the children in those schools. From its inception in 1969 as the largest new program originating from the authority of the Educational Professions Development Act (also expired), COP was conceived as a means of addressing such central educational issues as: (1) strengthening the self and group identity of the children of the poor, the minorities, and the alienated; (2) using training programs as an instrument of and catalyst for educational change; (3) bringing new and different persons into the schools to play new and different roles; and (4) developing relations of equality (parity) among participants, schools, communities being served, and colleges. The focus of COP was on the paraprofessional teacher aide, who was usually a minority (54% Black, 14.3% Hispanic-American, 3.7% Native American) and who came from the neighborhood in which she worked. Eighty-eight percent of the participants were female. Each COP participant received college-based training that would qualify her for a teaching certificate as an ultimate objective and, in any case, improved performance and credentials as an aide. The total cost for the 7-year COP effort was approximately $130,000,000. The program embraced 132 sites, roughly 18,000 participants, close to 3,000 schools, and 272 colleges and universities. COP produced a significant number of teachers from populations heretofore little represented in the teacher force. It is clear that a federally-designed program can be mounted across the country and that it can provide a means to meet an important national priority. (MM)