It’s not especially hard to make conventional predictions for the education world in 2012, reports the Washington Post: *The U.S. Education Department will grant some states waivers from the most onerous requirements of No Child Left Behind. *Congress will fail—again—to do a comprehensive rewrite of NCLB. *Education Secretary Arne Duncan will keep pushing the Race to the Top initiative, so long as Congress provides the cash, ignoring the lack of evidence to support the reforms it requires…But here are some predictions you might not be expecting (and that should make you laugh and cry at the same time). They were written by Mark Phillips, professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University and author of a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal…