The Department of Education offered a roundup of rankings, a video statement by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a recording of his press teleconference, and the states' applications and scores.

There are lots of angles reporters can explore with this round. How about the geographical one, as The New York Times pursued? Hawaii is the only state west of the Mississippi River to make the cut, the article notes.

There's the value-added angle. How did Ohio succeed with a double-digit surge in its scores from Phase 1 to Phase 2, while New Jersey and Arizona lost by mere points after double-digit efforts between the two rounds? The Newark Star-Ledger speculates that an error on the application cost New Jersey five points and a win.

Duncan said in a press conference on Tuesday that he wished he had more money to include more states, but the cutoff score for both phases was 440.

During the press conference, he commiserated with the losing states, but was adamant that the department did not have enough money to fund any more than the 10 selected. And he wouldn't step in to change any of the scores—although he said he would cut off a state's funding if it didn't follow through with its promises.

Education Week, as always, offers thoughtful preliminary analysis of the outcome.

Many education reformers expressed vociferous disappointment that Louisiana and Colardo were not on the list.

The Ohio Education Gadfly welcomed Ohio's ranking, but questioned whether Ohio had the political will to follow through. The Gadfly's DC contingent (Mike Petrilli) was more forceful, calling the selections a "disastrous outcome" for the administration.

Both Petrilli and Andy Rotherham—aka Eduwonk—lamented a selection process that relied too heavily on peer reviewers to the detriment of reform-minded states. Rather than keep his hands off the process, they argue, Duncan should have considered putting a thumb on the scale.

Bruce Baker, author of the schoolfinance101 blog, says RTTT should have put more emphasis on state effort and fairness in school finance. To him, Colorado and Louisiana did not deserve the grants anyway.

Eduflack's Patrick Riccard made analogies to college basketball brackets to discussa the competition. As he noted, oral presentations seemed to matter this time, while they didn't in Phase 1.

Colorado politicians and bloggers were not hesitant to vent their disappointment—and threaten that reforms might progress more slowly without the dollars from the feds.