Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene began writing for the IBM Center for The Business of Government on their blog covering the

Standardized tests are praised by some as a rational route to evaluating individual teachers or districts, while others vilify the technique as an outright attack on the entire educational profession. This debate, highly politicized, has emerged in many press articles as the beginning and the end of discussions about teacher evaluation.

Should major grant applicants get a chance to redo application mistakes? We know that we’re not alone in wondering about this after it came to light that New Jersey may have missed out on Race to the Top funding because of a simple error in responding to questions on the state’s Round Two application. (The state had, by the way, answered the same question properly – and gotten full credit for it – on its Round One application.)

Ten winners were announced yesterday in the second round of the Race to the Top competition: Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia.  We took a good look at the list and perused some of the commentary. Following are some of the facts that jumped out at us:

Just about an hour ago, Arne Duncan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, announced the names of the finalists for the second wave of Race to the Top grants. The 19 finalists – which will all get the opportunity to buttress their case in coming weeks, in hopes of actually receiving cash: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

There are lots of ways to skin a cat (an image we’ve always thought to be a bit gory). In the case of stimulus dollars going to education funding there are at least two strategies under consideration. One is to keep the Race to the Top program intact, as currently structured. The other – a Congressional proposal – would reallocate $500 million in Race to the Top funds to the Education Jobs Fund.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we’ve been pretty enthusiastic about the potential  of the Recovery Act’s Race to the Top program for schools (see here, for example). But we thought it was only fair to give some space to a well-respected authority who has a different point of view.

Education officials and teachers in many states are waiting to learn whether they will win grant funds in the 2nd round of Race to the Top. If the experience of round one applies, two of the big questions that will separate the winners from the losers are: 1) Are their goals ambitious enough? 2) Did they get sufficient teachers’ union buy-in?

Build America Bonds are the fastest-growing segment of the nearly $3 trillion muni bond market. Have they been priced too cheaply, benefiting investors at the expense of taxpayers? Are bank fees charged for selling the bonds too high?

As we scour the world for interesting bits of informational gold to bring to our readers, sometimes we discover that we’ve stockpiled three or four. Solution: With today’s installment, we’re inaugurating a periodic feature, to be called “Stimulus Watchers’ Reading List.” We strongly encourage you all to make recommendations for this list – and if you want credit, let us know and if we feature the report or article you recommend, we’ll attribute it to you. Here are some suggestions from this past week: