Education Week calls it a puzzle.

How much does the success of states in the federal Race to the Top competition hinge on their ability to secure wide-scale buy-in from school districts and local teachers' unions?

Tennessee and Delaware, as we know, had nearly universal buy-in from their school districts and teachers' unions in their successful applications in the first round of the education reform challenge.

Rhode Island appears to have cracked a part of that puzzle. The Providence Journal reports that one of Rhode Island's two major teachers' unions has decided to endorse the state's second-round Race to the Top efforts.

The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers in the state's urban and some of its suburban schools, said it would sign onto Rhode Island's Race to the Top application. The decision came just a few days after the teachers at Central Falls High School negotiated a deal with their superintendent to save their jobs. Central Falls, of course, was the high school that dismissed all of its teachers in February as part of a turnaround effort.

While the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers is signing onto the Ocean State's Race to the Top bid, the state's other major teachers' union, the National Education Association of Rhode Island, is still "on the fence," according to the Providence Journal.

For Maine, today is a crucial day in cracking that buy-in puzzle. It's the deadline (extended from May 14) for school districts to submit the paperwork that says whether they're buying in or they're not.

The Pine Tree State's teachers' union, the Maine Education Association, hasn't given Maine's Race to the Top application its explicit blessing. But the union is now telling its local affiliates that "maybe" they should sign onto the reform bid. That "maybe" recommendation comes after the union had a chance to review Maine's full Race to the Top application and suggest changes, and take part in a task force it designed to vet any teacher evaluation techniques that incorporate student achievement data.

While we're awaiting a final tally, how is Maine's effort at cracking the buy-in puzzle going? (Beware the scattered figures.)

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Department of Education had received memorandums of understanding from 68 of Maine's 215 school districts, according to department spokesman David Connerty-Marin.

When the department had tallied 55 memorandums of understanding, 14 of those had signatures from local union heads (the memorandums had spots for the signatures of superintendents, school board chairmen and teachers' union heads).

While those numbers don't necessarily look high, Connerty-Marin pointed out that those 68 school districts represent 348 schools, more than half of the Pine Tree State's schools. Those districts educate 113,777 students, well more than half of Maine's 190,000 students.

And, the rest of the state's school districts have until the rest of the day to turn in their endorsements.

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