Most of the 16 finalists in the first round of Race to the Top will go home as finalists -- not winners, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday afternoon.

The finalists -- Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee -- all scored more than 400 points out of a maximum possible 500 on their applications so far, beating out 25 other applicants. In-person interviews later this month will determine who will win. Duncan said it's likely the group will be winnowed to a number in the single digits. It's sheer coincidence, he said, that just one state west of the Mississippi made it very far in the first round. (That would be Colorado.) Duncan said he didn't intervene in the selection process to handpick any states as finalists. Many, however, are Southern right-to-work states.

"There was a natural break at 400," Duncan said. "There was no reason for me to go out of rank order."

Although it is a fraction of the overall amount set aside for education by last year's stimulus package, Race to the Top is one of the most competitive portions. The applications were judged on state pledges to improve academic standards, low-performing schools and teacher quality. States that couldn't get laws lifting restrictions on charters, or don't have charter school laws, weren't automatically eliminated either: New York and Kentucky made the list of finalists.

"Here is the deal: There are many, many factors we were looking at. Charters were never going to be the determining factor," he said. "We tried to be very, very comprehensive. No state had a perfect application."

During the interviews, Duncan said he wants states to demonstrate how committed they are to putting their plans into action -- without consultants on hand to coach them. Duncan still has the final say, however, regardless of how states score.

Videos of interviews with finalists, along with reviewers' comments about their applications, will become public after the winners are announced, Duncan said. But the press and other observers won't be able to watch the interviews live.

It's not clear how much money the first phase winners will receive, but it is likely to be less than half of the $4.35 billion budgeted for Race to the Top this year. Duncan said the amount states requested had no bearing on how their application scored. (Some states requested more than guidelines created by the Education Department allotted them.) The goal, he said, is to ensure the second phase of the awards will be as competitive, or more so. The second round begins in June, with winners announced in September.

But President Barack Obama has asked for another $1.35 billion in next year's budget to keep the program going.