President Lyndon Johnson's support of Federal aid to education rested on the belief that schools were effective agents of upward mobility in American Life. Achievement in school, poverty planners thought, was directly related to later economic status. The question of whether poverty planners were justified in making these assumptions in developing the educational components of the War on Poverty is explored in this study. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) is used to explore questions underlying the making of educational policy, and the implementation of educational and social reforms. The reasons for initially emphasizing an educational solution for poverty in the mid 1960's are examined. The impact on poverty of the ESEA is assessed. It is noted that the ESEA never lived up to liberal hopes because policy makers neither examined their fundamental beliefs nor confronted the nature of the American school system that they hoped to reform. Intellectual and political conflicts surrounding the history, implementation and failure of the ESEA are analyzed. An extensive bibliography is also included in this work. (Author/GC)