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We now know which sixteen states made the cut in the first round of Race to the Top applications. It seems many should be grateful that the Gates Foundation lent a hand.

I made some hasty calculations: If a state received help from Gates in putting together an application, it had a 56% chance of making the cut. If a state received no help from Gates, it had an 8% chance of making the cut.

So here are some questions to think about as we consider a future in which the feds shift much more money into competitive grants. Will wealthy foundations become the arbiters of who gets that money? Will they help preordain the winners and the losers? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

Remember that many poor and small districts can't easily pay for grant writers. They'll have to wait for the deus ex machina.

[Hat tip to @politicsk12 on Twitter. Any mistakes in my hasty calculations are all my own.]