Ayers' influence on the incoming Obama administration has quite likely made itself felt for the first time.  The campaign today announced the appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond as co-head of the Presidential transition policy team on Education. 

Darling-Hammond is a prominent and widely respected, though controversial, Professor of Education at Stanford. She shares with Ayers long time support for what I consider an authoritarian and ideological approach to education that includes advocacy of "social justice" teaching (not to be confused with support for social justice itself, mind you) and so-called "small schools." 

Ayers and Darling-Hammond share a deeply held view that race is critical to explaining problems in education. [snip] Ayers has also endorsed Darling-Hammond's call for whites to repay the "education debt" to people of color that has allegedly accumulated for centuries. Darling-Hammond said that repayment of the "education debt" should be the top priority of the next President. She contributed a chapter to a book edited by Ayers called "Education for Democracy."