U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced that 10 applicants have won grants in the second phase of the Race to the Top competition. Along with Phase 1 winners Delaware and Tennessee, 11 states and the District of Columbia have now been awarded money in the Obama administration’s groundbreaking education reform program that will directly impact 13.6 million students and 980,000 teachers in 25,000 schools.

The 10 winning Phase 2 applications in alphabetical order are the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Most of the winning states include rural and small town school districts.

“These states show what is possible when adults come together to do the right thing for children,” said Secretary Arne Duncan. “Every state that applied showed a tremendous amount of leadership and a bold commitment to education reform. The creativity and innovation in each of these applications is breathtaking,” Duncan continued. “We set a high bar and these states met the challenge.”

While peer reviewers rated these 10 as having the highest scoring plans, very few points separated them from the remaining applications. The deciding factor on the number of winners selected hinged on both the quality of the applications and the funds available.

“We had many more competitive applications than money to fund them in this round,” Duncan said. “We’re very hopeful there will be a Phase 3 of Race to the Top and have requested $1.35 billion dollars in next year’s budget. In the meantime, we will partner with each and every state that applied to help them find ways to carry out the bold reforms they’ve proposed in their applications.”

A total of 46 states and the District of Columbia put together comprehensive education reform plans to apply for Race to the Top in Phases 1 and 2. Over the course of the Race to the Top competition, 35 states and the District of Columbia adopted rigorous common, college- and career-ready standards in reading and math, and 34 states changed laws or policies to improve education.

Every state that applied has already done the hard work of collaboratively creating a comprehensive education reform agenda. In the coming months, the Department plans to bring all states together to help ensure the success of their work implementing reforms around college- and career-ready standards, data systems, great teachers and leaders, and school turnarounds. Secretary Duncan had promised to set the bar "very, very high" for the winners. Further details at USED.

The guidelines for the "Race to the Top" money required that any state hoping to land a grant must allow student test scores to be used in decisions about teacher compensation and evaluation. The states’ plans also will be judged on how friendly they are to charter schools and whether the state tapped its rainy-day funds instead of cutting K-12 funding this year.

A winning state can use half the award as it wishes, but half would have to be distributed to school districts based on the Title I formula for disadvantaged students. The money would not, however, have to be spent according to Title I rules.

President Obama proposed an additional $1.3 billion in his fiscal year 2011 budget to continue the Race to the Top program for a second year.