The Department of Education announced the winners of the Race to the Top competition today.  Of the 16 finalists, Tennessee ($502 million) and Delaware ($107 million) will be the only applicants to receive money in the first round.  Surprisingly, front-runners Florida and Louisiana finished out of the money this round as did several large states including New York and Illinois.  We are still waiting on the score-sheets and reviewers comments to be released. Should be some interesting info there.  For those of you who want to read about the first round winners check out Ed-Week, The Wall St. Journal,and The New York Times. I also plan to keep an eye on Rick Hess’s blog.  He’s had some great RTTT analysis. Here is his take on today’s announcement:

Looking at Delaware and Tennessee leaves me thinking that all the talk about bold reform was window dressing. The states that explicitly set out to blow past conventions, and devil take the hindmost, fell by the wayside. Florida and Louisiana’s bold, action-backed plans–which reflected a belief that they could push forward if they did so only with the eager and willing–lost out to states that obtained laughable levels of buy-in from school districts, school boards, and local teachers’ unions.

*****

Placing this much weight on ‘stakeholder support’ is going to feed cynicism about the sincerity of Duncan’s calls for bold, transformative change. Hard to square this very conventional emphasis on consensus with all his tough talk. Of course, this does remind us of his famously cautious reform efforts in Chicago. Wonder if the White House is having second thoughts yet about having passed on Joel Klein?

UPDATE: The DOE has posted the score-sheets and reviewers comments. Here is the DOE press release, and here is a ranking of state scores.