On October 6, 1957, most Americans had concluded that Sputnik, a manmade satellite that the Russians had sent into orbit, was not a hoax nor an electronic Potemkin Village, a product of what is called today as "special effects." Initially, the idea that Russian technology could surpass the American's was unthinkable. And the brains' repression of Sputnik's reality was abetted by the implications that the putative orb carried: if they can send this thing over the people's heads, they can also attach an atomic bomb and drop it in their laps. In this article, the author looks back at an event in the Fifties that seemed to change everything for the U.S. as a whole and for U.S. education in particular. He reports on the condition of public education in 1957 and in 2007 as well as on the condition of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Working his way forward to the present day, he makes it clear that the time when everything changed also marked the point at which things started staying the same. (Contains 1 table and 58 endnotes.)