Education Week dives into the second-round Race to the Top applications in an article this week, trying once again to tackle the buy-in question.

The education policy journal found the 35 states that applied for Race to the Top money in the competition's second round secured, on average, more buy-in from local teachers' unions than the set of first-round applicants.

Michele McNeil reports that 68 percent of local teachers' unions signed onto Race to the Top applications for the second round of competition. That's up from 46 percent among first-round applicants. On the school district front, second-round applicants got 61 percent of districts to buy into their Race to the Top proposals, down slightly from 62 percent the first time around.

Since Maine didn't submit a first-round Race to the Top application -- it was ineligible for competition due to the longstanding legal ban on connecting student test scores to teacher evaluations -- it's impossible to rate the Pine Tree State's progress on securing more buy-in.

But we know that Maine had 82 districts sign on, along with 24 local teachers' unions. As both Steve Bowen and I have noted, that buy-in breaks down when you look at exactly which initiatives the districts and unions decided to support. For example, there's much less support for tying teacher evaluations based on student achievement data to tenure and compensation than there is for tying those evaluations to the professional development that's made available to teachers.

So, how does Maine stack up if the level of buy-in figures heavily into the U.S. Department of Education's application evaluations?

That 82 districts signed on (presumably 82 of 215) means 38 percent of Maine's school districts offered their support. By the same measure, that's 11 percent of teachers' unions. Those percentages are well below average, according to the Education Week analysis. Of course, the number of school districts Maine has is continually up for grabs, meaning the level of district buy-in could be as high as 41 percent.

What's important, Maine education officials say, is the percentage of students -- and especially impoverished students -- reached by the Race to the Top reform agenda. That translates to 70 percent of students and 59 percent of students in poverty.

The Education Week analysis doesn't dive into those numbers. But if most states got more of their districts and unions to sign on than Maine did, then it's likely their Race to the Top reforms would reach a greater chunk of their student populations.

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