This book analyses the parallel, different and related aspects of the discovery of poverty in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the role of education in the American ‘war on poverty’ from 1964, and in Britain from the appointment of the Plowden committee on primary schools. It examines changes in policy emphases, the relationship between research and policy, and the transatlantic interactions and silences involved. Based on archival and interview material the book offers new insights into the role of the Plowden committee in shifting attention from social class to poverty, and it discusses in both the American and British contexts the concepts and theories involved in the changing fortunes of the educational war on poverty in the 1960s and 1970s. The book is the product of a ten-year study of the relevant British and American policies and apart from its coverage of a substantial body of literature draws on interviews with leading actors in the policy field, researchers and practitioners. The Silvers set the two national developments in their respective traditions of educational and social science research and their economic systems, and continue their analysis through to the changed economic, political and educational contexts of the 1980s. The central focus is the sources, contours and outcomes of policy making in the field of poverty and disadvantage. An Educational War on Poverty represents a major contribution to the study of the recent social and educational history of Britain and the United States, and the range and depth of research, reflected in two substantive national bibliographies, will make it an essential reference source for scholars and policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic.