Colorado’s second straight failure in the federal Race to the Top education grant competition has resulted in finger-pointing and fear that state education reforms have suffered a mighty blow.

The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday awarded nearly $3.4 billion to nine states and the District of Columbia. Colorado lost out on $175 million intended to spark innovation in districts statewide.

Colorado leaders are left to ponder why the state’s application fell short, but more importantly how to cobble together funding for mandated education reforms while budgets are being slashed.

“We are absolutely convinced we have the right platform,” said Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien, who led the state’s Race to the Top effort. “We are just going to move forward, maybe at a slightly slower pace.”

Colorado officials had earmarked $13 million from the big grant to help develop and implement new standards and assessments to replace the Colorado Student Assessment Program, which tests students every year in reading, writing and math.

Local districts would have received an additional $5.8 million to create and share new curricula that reflected the new standards.

Another major pillar of state education reform — plans to target and provide resources for a greater number of struggling schools — would have received $11 million.

The state also planned to spend $13 million overhauling the way schools evaluate, promote and reward teachers based, in part, on student success, as laid out by Senate Bill 191, which passed on the last day of legislative session.

State Sen. Michael Johnston, the Democratic freshman lawmaker who wrote the legislation, said the loss of funding won’t be a problem.

The estimated $240,000 needed to cover the salaries of employees implementing SB 191 is covered by dipping into a reserve fund. Another federal grant is up for grabs to pay for parts of a new assessment system and federal money already has been granted to pay for school turnaround efforts, he said.

“This would have been nice money to have,” Johnston said. “But there is nothing that will cease to exist without this funding.”

Unions under fire

Some reformers, however, are blaming the powerful Colorado Education Association and most local teacher unions for refusing to support the state’s application in the second round.

Judges’ comments, which will be released to the public today, reportedly downgraded Colorado’s application for lack of union support.

“It seems pretty clear to me that in Colorado, if the CEA would have supported this, then Colorado would have likely won,” said Van Schoales, director of Education Reform Now, a Denver-based education advocacy group.

CEA president Beverly Ingle said people are looking for a scapegoat. “There was something else at play. It was not the CEA or its members. “

Ingle said the union supported the state’s failed first-round application and later pushed for collaboration but was repeatedly told during the legislative session “that our participation didn’t matter.”

Ingle said the reforms now must slow down and legislators must not create laws funded by potential grants.

“We shouldn’t be passing things that we don’t have the money to do,” she said. “We don’t do it in our personal budgets, why should we do it in the state?”

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a telephone news conference Tuesday, downplayed the effect of low union buy-in on a state’s overall total.

“There isn’t any one factor,” he said. “We want folks collaborating, but at the end of the day, we want breakthrough reform.”

Duncan said he was “very, very sorry” Colorado didn’t win and said the state “has been and will continue to be a national leader in driving reform.”

Education reformers who have watched the national competition incorrectly predicted Colorado would win the money because of last spring’s “bold” legislation.

“Colorado was robbed,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. “Colorado went the extra mile doing things that no other state even tried. It makes no sense to me.”

Frederick Hess, director of education studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said Colorado’s loss shows the process was flawed.

“The fact that Colorado could pass Senate Bill 191 and get dinged on teaching means there was a fundamental problem with the way the criteria was set,” he said. “It suggested it was more about grant-writing, presentation skills and union buy-in than reform.”

A flawed process?

Colorado finished 17th out of 19 finalists.

“We’re extremely disappointed,” said Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who complained that the scoring process was flawed.

Colorado received an average overall score of 420.2 points on a 500-point scale from five reviewers. The point total was better than last time, when the state got only 409.6 points.

But the difference between the top reviewer’s score and the bottom was 111 points, Ritter noted.

“If you look at three of the judges and you average their scores, we’re absolutely in the money,” Ritter said. “That leads me to believe there are some flaws in how objective the measurements really are.”

In the critical “Teachers and Leaders” section of the application, which asked how Colorado plans to evaluate teachers and improve educators, reviewers gave the state the same score as in Round 1 — even after the state passed SB 191.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., also criticized the judging.”It is also troubling that no state west of the Mississippi, other than Hawaii, made this round of cuts.”

Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com

Staff writer Colleen O’Connor contributed to this report.