This text provides a historical and critical analysis of the development of Quebec intervention policies in disadvantaged environments over the past 50 years. The first step is to reconstruct the evolution of the main challenges of these policies (designing the link between poverty and education, guidelines and means, management methods, division of roles and powers, evaluation of results). Subsequently, it takes a critical look at the policies that have been carried out in order to formulate, drawing on lessons learned, some suggestions that could feed into the reflection on the future of these policies.