Kennedy Learns from Failure.

Congress renewed the National Defense Education Act of 1958 for two more years in 1961. However, President John F. Kennedy wanted new and much more sweeping programs to improve conditions for both students and teachers. The Kennedy administration pressed vigorously for federal aid from 1961 to 1963, but political opponents objecting to the form that aid might take branded the program a fiasco. Perhaps this failure was a blessing, however. Francis Keppel, then dean of Harvard School of Education, was an adviser who helped draft proposed legislation in 1960. As he later recalled, "We came up with a report that, had it been adopted, would probably have broken the federal government's bank in no time at all." The funds were to go only to public schools since President Kennedy, a Catholic, was unwilling to risk his slender political majority by...