The policies and positions taken by the United States Congress in their enactment of Smith-Hughes have been extraordinarily powerful forces in determining the current status of vocational education. Remarkably, these central segregating and separating provisions have proven to be largely impervious to change in spite of the large-scale shifts in emphasis which have occurred since its original enactment. In fact, these provisions were later augmented and reinforced by subsequent actions. It will be useful to examine briefly how the emphasis on vocational-technical education has been altered through the years.