The Race to the Top is officially on, so says Michele in her piece on a big standards pow-wow in Chicago today. (And contrary to Sam Dillon’s meandering piece on standards in the New York Times, Arne Duncan is not the first such federal official to make the call for national standards.)

Alexander Russo appears to be quite broken up over the news that EdWeek’s own David Hoff is leaving.

Is John Easton, the new head of the Institute of Education Sciences, reform-y enough? Mike Petrilli at Flypaper debates himself.

The budgetary “shell games” that Michele wrote about in this excellent story are alive and well even in states that are in relatively good financial shape, says this Houston Chronicle op-ed.

And finally, if you haven’t already, check out my colleague Debbie Viadero’s excellent, live coverage of the American Educational Research Association’s conference over at Inside School Research. Apparently, she’s hobnobbing with “washed-up terrorist” (at least according to Sen. McCain) Bill Ayers who gave us a lot to blog about during the campaign.