After literally months of daily stories in local and national newspapers about Race to the Top--often dozens per day--today my Google Reader account had ZERO articles on the RTT.
Obviously, this is a treat for me--I've had my share of stories that begin with "Despite strong opposition from a variety of education stakeholders including the state teachers union, last night state legislators responded to Arne Duncan's challenge and passed..."
But it also signals the beginning of a new RTT phase. We're likely to see very few new state legislative battles until awards are made in April and losing states go back to the drawing boards to address peer reviewers' comments. The only exceptions may be in states that didn't apply in the first round because they knew changes had to be made.
Attention now shifts to the Department and the peer reviewers who will be reading thousands of pages of promises and filling in score sheets. But their lips are locked until April.
So RTT is going to be relatively low-profile for the next two months or so. Filling the vacuum will be three things: the release of the final i3 documents, the budget, and an ESEA proposal. We know the budget will dominate a few days in early February. The timing of i3 and ESEA will probably just be a function of ED's bandwidth.
--Andy Smarick