Some states skeptical of 'Race to Top'

• Tweet

WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- Some U.S. states are skeptical about applying for the Obama administration's second round of grant money for improving schools, officials said.

After months of work by states, the $4 billion "Race to the Top" program awarded only Delaware and Tennessee any money when the results of the first round were announced last week by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

"It was like the Olympic Games, and we were an American skater with a Soviet judge from the 1980s," Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. told The New York Times in a story published Monday.

Delaware was awarded $100 million and Tennessee $500 million, leaving about $3.4 billion to be doled out to states in September in the second round.

Officials in Colorado and other states, including California and South Carolina, are questioning the criteria by which winners were chose and why only two states were picked, The Times reported.

Federal education officials have said they view the program as fair and as a great success.