EVEN THOUGH the Obama administration is jettisoning the name of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it is not abandoning the core principles embodied in the 2002 law. The administration has embraced the principles of accountability, disaggregating data and insisting that no student groups -- not minorities, not those with disabilities -- be left behind. The details will be key, but it is heartening that the administration is mapping out a direction true to education reform. Let's hope Congress agrees to go along for the ride.

IT'S AN election year in Maryland, so there is a certain nervousness about a measure being debated in the General Assembly to assess a five-cent fee on disposable plastic and paper bags. The accepted wisdom is: Don't raise taxes if you want to get reelected. Such thinking misunderstands the philosophy behind the bag bill and underestimates the public's desire to do something for the environment. Maryland lawmakers need only look across the border to the District to see why they should enact this bill.

IN ARIZONA, where the official malice directed at immigrants who came to the United States illegally is unsurpassed, Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill that would criminalize every such immigrant just for being in the state. It's the latest attempt to harass, intimidate and hound the state's several hundred thousand undocumented residents.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S Middle East diplomacy failed in his first year in part because he chose to engage in an unnecessary and unwinnable public confrontation with Israel over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Over the past six months Mr. Obama's envoys gingerly retreated from that fight and worked to build better relations with the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. Last week the administration finally managed to strike a deal for the launching of indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. So it has been startling -- and a little puzzling -- to see Mr. Obama deliberately plunge into another public brawl with the Jewish state.