Conn. really sold on Race to the Top?

Just maybe, Connecticut didn't do enough.

Even before Tuesday's announcement by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan naming 10 new recipients of multimillion-dollar Race to the Top grants, the Nutmeg State knew it was out of the running.

Connecticut wasn't on the list of finalists announced in July for the second wave of $3 billion in federal education funding, bonus grants to states committed to shaking up public education for the sake of improved student performance.

But when the Obama administration announced the winners this week, it still had to hurt. Massachusetts ranked first, collecting an additional $250 million, and Rhode Island was fifth, taking a $75 million prize. Next-door neighbor Connecticut got shut out.

Nines states and the District of Columbia are the latest Race to the Top winners, each the recipient of a grant, with Florida and New York pocketing the most money, $700 million each. That's real money to affect change in public schools, to help close achievement gaps, make more children proficient in reading and writing and boost the dismal graduation rates at some high schools.

The U.S. Department of Education awards the funds through a competitive process tied to states enacting reforms aimed at rethinking public education, abandoning old premises, promoting charter schools and holding educators accountable for failure.

Connecticut appeared committed. After the state missed out in the first round, its education commissioner defended his department's work when it was accused of submitting a sloppy Race to the Top application. And this past spring, the General Assembly enacted secondary-school reforms to sweeten the state's bid in the new round of funding.

Now it appears Connecticut's top educators aren't so enamored with the program. Last week at a back-to-school presentation at the state Department of Education, the commissioner's office, in a presentation to superintendents and other education officials, noted that the state did not "fully embrace DOE's theory of action on reforming under performing schools via School Improvement Grants."

Part of the same PowerPoint presentation referenced a report that concludes, "The prevailing paradigm for school improvement in Washington is not based on a solid foundation of research or hard evidence."

And more: "Connecticut has built its school systems in ways that are uniquely ours, and historically grounded in highly successful approaches dating back to the '80s."

Those sentiments sure sound like state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan isn't sold on Race to the Top. And that may very well be the best explanation for why Connecticut ranked 25th out of the 36 applicant states for the new funding.

So is the state committed or not? It needs to be.