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After Tuesday, we should know a lot more about the fate of a trifecta of bills meant to strengthen Maine's position in the federal Race to the Top competition for $4 billion in education innovation funding.

That's when members of the Legislature's Education Committee are expected to take their first votes on bills that would:
• strike down Maine's ban on linking student achievement and teacher and principal evaluations;
• allow Maine to adopt the "Common Core Standards," a national set of standards being developed by the National Governors Association; and
• let school districts start up so-called "innovative" schools in their midst.

The proposals, from Gov. John Baldacci's administration, have compromise written all over them. And it's clear that the proposals wouldn't have surfaced had it not been for the prospect of up to $100 million in federal money.

The bill ending Maine's ban on linking student achievement to teacher and principal evaluations does just that, and nothing else. The Obama administration is putting a premium on teacher evaluation systems that set the stage for performance-based pay. The powerful Maine Education Association, however, opposes such efforts. The teachers' union even opposes the modest proposal before Maine's legislators.

Teachers' union opposition is also what led Baldacci to propose "innovative" schools, rather than try again to legalize the independently run charter schools prized by the Obama administration. "Innovative" schools wouldn't be as free as charter schools to dismiss ineffective teachers, and their staffs would be unionized like other school district personnel.

One might think the modest nature of Maine's proposals to make itself more attractive to federal education officials wouldn't do the trick. But Maine might still stand a chance to claim a piece of the $4 billion pie when it applies by June 1 for funding in Race to the Top's second round.

The Obama administration last week -- coincidentally, the same day as the public hearing on these bills -- announced that 16 (well, 15 states and Washington, D.C.) of the 41 states that took part in Race to the Top's first round were finalists for the money.

The Washington Post pointed out that federal officials selected a handful of states that had, in recent months, undertaken aggressive policy reform efforts. Tennessee, for example, introduced a new charter school law last year and recently shepherded through new teacher evaluation systems, alternative teacher certification programs and wide latitude for the state to take charter of under-performing schools.

But the list of states that didn't make the cut included some that had undertaken major legislative reform efforts over the past year. California and Michigan come to mind.

At the same time, some states that hadn't pushed through aggressive reforms did make the final cut. Kentucky, like Maine, doesn't have a charter school law. New York didn't manage to shepherd through an education reform package before applying for Race to the Top funds, and that state still bans using student test scores in teacher tenure decisions.

What does that mean for Maine?

The Pine Tree State's chances might be better than some of its education policy critics think. Or, Maine's chances might be pretty poor after all, especially with such modest efforts at Race to the Top-related policy changes.

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Regular readers of this site might have noticed that I signed off from The Report Card blog more than a month ago to take a job out of state. Well, I have returned to Maine and the education beat at the MaineToday Media newspapers. I'm looking forward to reigniting this blog's momentum.

-Matthew Stone

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