Arne Duncan got an earful from reporters today. They asked about scoring and why some states emerged as finalists when they did little to improve various parts of their reform portfolio. Take New York for example, which failed to lift the cap that stands in the way of its considerably successful charter environment from growing.

“We said from day one,” said Duncan, “that there were many, many factors” that would go into the scoring. Many different things would be considered, he said.  “Charters were never going to be the determining factor from the very beginning.”

And there you go. Despite early and strong support for the idea that charter schools could turn around failing schools and promises that R2TT would help incentivize more states to lift caps and grow, charter laws were relatively inconsequential to the decisions of reviewers to pre-qualify 15 states plus the District of Columbia for new federal funds.

Why else would only three of the sixteen have charter laws among the top ten in the country? Indeed, Kentucky has none and seven others have laws that are barely passing.

So maybe the applicants were scored based on how rigorous their evaluations of teachers will be. Right? Wrong. Rhode Island’s application starts factoring in the impact a teacher has on student growth three years from now, and whose to say how they are going to measure that impact? Tennessee starts in 2011, but its law only requires 35% of a teacher’s evaluation to factor in student growth.

What’s going on here? California lifted its ban on the use of test data to evaluate teachers but the Golden State didn’t make it. DC and Florida, along with Colorado and Louisiana, might just be the only reformist states that made the final list. And now that it’s clear that a strong charter law or performance pay system doesn’t seem to matter for the competition, state policymakers can breath a sigh of relief that they don’t have to do any heavy lifting to get or stay in the game, just hire a smart team of consultants to create convincing charts and use flowery language. Read a little of Illinois’ application. It seems to be written entirely in the future tense.

So, do you fans of increased federal involvement in education still think it can make a difference to improving education for our children?

“Buried within a 263-page application for $409 million in federal grant money, Ohio education officials detail how they want to spend $600,000 for two cultural anthropologists, $400,000 for a video, $320,000 for a communications plan and another $160,000 for ‘creative messaging,’ according to this morning’s Dayton, Ohio news.  This set State Senator Jon Husted, a former education chair and current candidate for Secretary of State off the deep end. He called it an example of why people lose faith in government, and was “embarrassed” by some of the things the state is seeking to fund.

That’s not the worst of it. These abuses of money are obvious, but what about the policies that sound like they are addressing the Administration’s mandate to reform education but are actually carefully crafted to dodge the issue?

Take Tennessee, a state rumored to be a finalist today, whose Governor was lauded for signing into law a bill that requires at least 35% of teacher evaluations be pegged to student growth.  Their ‘Race to the Top’ application appears to imply that a greater amount of student growth counts towards teacher evaluation than is actually the case. The application says, “objective student achievement data will comprise 50% of the evaluation”, but does not make clear that student growth is still only 35% of that process, not 50%. The rest of how they will determine teacher performance is left up to multiple measures, classroom observation and other assessment tools to be decided. Cagey, no?

How about the competition’s push for charter schools? Delaware’s movement toward charter schools was halted by a series of self-imposed moratoriums (not mentioned in their application), they approved zero charters for this current school year and their approval of three new charter schools to open in 2010-2011 is hardly bold. And yet their application states “Delaware is among the most welcoming states for charter schools.”

Reviewers, however, are not permitted to use their knowledge of a state’s policies and environment to judge the applications.  It’s what’s on paper that requires their focus, not what they know (or can easily find out).

These are just a few of the examples that have many wondering how we can give credit to an otherwise well -intentioned program, one that may actually end up rewarding states for creative writing over good policy. Today we will know more when EdSec Duncan announces the finalists. Whether it will mean the race is won, or just starting again, remains to be seen.

In my junior year of high school, I was caught red handed not signed up for a Fall sports team (we were required to participate in one every season). I was guilty, had no defense, was unceremoniously marched over to the cross-country team and “volunteered”. For the record, this was and remains the harshest punishment ever exacted upon my person.

I showed up every day and did only that which was required, nothing more (sometimes less).

When we competed in a race, though I usually came in last, (I thought) I crossed each finish line in style, sprinting with my last reserves of energy. But it was all for show. Those who stuck around to actually see me finish saw only this explosion of effort and quite rightly wondered why I had not doled it out over the entire course.

It was a sad display of ego and false enthusiasm.

And I am reminded almost daily of this as states rush education legislation through their political machines. One by one, Illinois, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Delaware, Tennessee and their neighbors sprint across the finish line just in time for their ‘Race to the Top’ applications to have a little more content to accompany their creative writing.

What if they had been working on these education efforts over time, with focus and determination? What if they had trained a little harder in order to move beyond the superficial? What if they had made changes to their schools just because it was necessary and right, rather than lucrative?

I was never going to be a cross-country runner, and my finish line sprints proved that. Will the same be true of states in the ‘Race to the Top’?