In the upcoming New York Times Magazine, Steven Brill has a long article on Race to the Top. It focuses primarily on the teachers union angle and New York's application, but it also covers the broader landscape by quoting Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Paul Pastorek, Michelle Rhee, John King, Randi Weingarten, and others.
It also reveals a very disconcerting aspect of many round one applications?that a number of states exaggerated the support of their unions by adding a collective bargaining loophole to the standard MOU. Hopefully ED will be prepared for this in round two.
If you've been following RTT closely, you won't find much new in the article, but it is a nicely written summary with some very worthwhile anecdotes. If you haven't had time to follow RTT as closely as you would've liked but want to catch up, you might want to bump Brill's article to the top of your to-read pile. (For a longer, wonkier take on RTT, see here.)
?Andy Smarick