Duncan: “This is about maximum transparency.”

A few states, including New York, have refused to make their Race to the Top applications public because, they say, revealing what they are proposing would hurt their competitiveness in the second round of grants. “Absolutely not,” Secretary Duncan just said in a conference call with reporters, in response to my question. “This is about maximum transparency.” Duncan said that department staff is scrubbing the applications not yet posted to make sure they don’t contain personal identification (huh? public figures, public phone numbers, but whatever), and they will put them online themselves “in the not too distant future.”