As readers of this blog will recall, Maine applied for the second round of grants under the federal Race to the Top program earlier this year and did not even make it to the final round. I did a series of blog posts on the state’s application, ultimately coming to conclude that the application was simply too weak to win the state a grant.
How right I was.
We knew weeks ago that Maine did not make it to the final round, but we only found out today, with the announcement of the Round 2 winners and the publication of the Round 2 scores, that Maine ended up ranked 33rd out of the 36 states to apply. We’ll have to do more analysis in the days ahead to determine what the federal scorers thought of Maine’s application, but they evidently didn’t think much of it:
(How bad did we do? The cutoff to make the final round was a score of 400, but Maine would not have made it to the final round if the cutoff score had even been 300! Ouch!)
| State | Rank | Total Score |
| Massachusetts | 1 | 471 |
| New York | 2 | 464.8 |
| Hawaii | 3 | 462.4 |
| Florida | 4 | 452.4 |
| Rhode Island | 5 | 451.2 |
| District of Columbia | 6 | 450 |
| Maryland | 6 | 450 |
| Georgia | 8 | 446.4 |
| North Carolina | 9 | 441.6 |
| Ohio | 10 | 440.8 |
| New Jersey | 11 | 437.8 |
| Arizona | 12 | 435.4 |
| Louisiana | 13 | 434 |
| South Carolina | 14 | 431 |
| Illinois | 15 | 426.6 |
| California | 16 | 423.6 |
| Colorado | 17 | 420.2 |
| Pennsylvania | 18 | 417.6 |
| Kentucky | 19 | 412.4 |
| Oklahoma | 20 | 391.8 |
| Arkansas | 21 | 389.2 |
| Iowa | 22 | 382.8 |
| Michigan | 23 | 381.6 |
| Nevada | 24 | 381.2 |
| Connecticut | 25 | 379 |
| Utah | 25 | 379 |
| Wisconsin | 27 | 368.4 |
| New Mexico | 28 | 366.2 |
| New Hampshire | 29 | 335.2 |
| Missouri | 30 | 316.4 |
| Nebraska | 31 | 295.8 |
| Washington | 32 | 290.6 |
| Maine | 33 | 283.4 |
| Mississippi | 34 | 263.4 |
| Montana | 35 | 238.4 |
| Alabama | 36 | 212 |