Now I know Black Friday is usually thought of as a day for bargain hunters to mob Walmart stores and their minimum-wage-ish associates, but can I just point out that by swelling the Walton family coffers, these shoppers are actually helping to create more opportunities for low-income youth? Wait-why are you laughing?

 Gordon Lafer: Because it's preposterous-you can't be an adult and say that with a straight face. First of all, the thing that correlates most clearly with educational performance in every study is poverty. So when you look at the agenda of the biggest and richest corporate lobbies in the country, it's impossible to conclude that they want to see the full flowering of the potential of each little kid in poor cities. 

In 1853, the most important man in nineteenth-century American education gave a speech praising female teachers. Horace Mann was the head of the growing common school system in Massachusetts, where women teachers already outnumbered men by four to one. That helped save money for taxpayers, because school districts could pay women less than their male counterparts. It also capitalized on women's natural instincts and abilities, Mann argued, converting America's formerly chaotic, male-led classrooms into domiciles of love and order. 

Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is the incoming chairman of the Senate committee overseeing education, says his top education priority is fixing the landmark Bush-era law. His goal? Get a bill signed by President Barack Obama early next year.

Doing so will require bipartisanship that's been elusive since the law, primarily designed to help minority and poor children, came up for renewal in 2007.  The law requires schools to show annual growth in student achievement or face consequences, with all students expected to be proficient in reading and math this year. 

A political battle that played out earlier this year surrounding Washington state's waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act looks as if it will repeat itself come January.

Washington lost its waiver from onerous parts of the education accountability law in April, after the Legislature declined to bring the state's teacher evaluation system in line with federal requirements.  Now, the state schools chief and some state lawmakers plan to try again in hopes of regaining the state's exemption from No Child Left Behind. They are likely to face intense opposition from the state teacher's union, which lobbied heavily earlier this year against changing the state's teacher and principal evaluation system.