What Would L.B.J. Make of the NCLB Act?

If Lyndon B. Johnson were alive today, he’d probably be leading the chorus of those who say the No Child Left Behind Act is insufficiently funded.

The 36th president, who proposed the original version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and signed it into law in 1965, envisioned that funding under the ESEA would quickly become a large portion of school districts’ budgets, according to a former federal official who helped write the law.

“He would be terribly disappointed that the funding is as low as it is,” Samuel Halperin, who was an assistant U.S. commissioner of education in 1965, said in...