In his Inaugural Address in 1965, Lyndon Johnson, coming off one of the great landslides, spread out the plans for his Great Society. It was the heyday of liberalism, and those were days of hope. After civil rights, education topped the agenda. On April 11, at the grammar school he attended, LBJ signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the first federal education law in U.S. history, focused on disadvantaged children. And after 40 years and trillions of tax dollars plunged into public education at all levels, how stands public education? Well, it depends. Sam Dillon reports in Sunday's New...