ABSTRACT
In the 1960s, during the social push of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, Dr. Rick Heber and others at the University of Wisconsin initiated an early intervention program referred to as the “Milwaukee Project.” The story of this project may be the most unusual in the history of education. Considering its size, the project was grotesquely costly, eventually running some $14 million. Not long after the project's inception the directors claimed that they had raised the IQs of 20 children by some 30 points, but the nature of this change, if real, was impossible for outsiders to verify. The Director himself, Rick Heber, had a startling career: close to powerful political figures, he had been given a high Presidential appointment, but subsequently was convicted for fraud and personal misuse of federal funds and consigned to a federal penitentiary. Two other colleagues were also convicted.
