The operative phrase in Tennessee for several weeks was a "Race to the Top."
The better question: the top of what?
The answer is not an athletic quest to move to the highest rung of the latest Associated Press poll or to be the best runner from a field of many in a foot race.
This race is about more than short-term gratification from riding atop a fluid rating system or knowing you were able to push yourself physically to post a better time.
It also is about more than money.
The plug of stimulus dollars that flowed into the state last year merely postponed the bitter pill of budget cuts that loom on the horizon.
History shows that throwing money at a problem produces minimal results, for the infusion of cash simply delays tough choices.
The state's Race to the Top will pay out over decades. Success will be tested and proved in the offices, laboratories and entrepreneurial garages that provide a fertile learning ground for invention, innovation and production.
If the effort is successful, the 19 percent of college graduates in the state today will bloom to more than 35 percent in the future.
There should be improvement in statistics showing that for every 100 high school students, 67 graduate from high school in four years; 43 go to college immediately after graduation; 29 return for their sophomore year of college; and 19 graduate with an associate's degree in three years or bachelor's degree in six.
But that means the status quo is no longer acceptable.
Parents, teachers and students are being asked to make tough choices that will make a difference years later. Instant gratification is not an option.
Long-standing educational organizations like the Tennessee Education Association that have withheld changes are being told to accept new standards of practice.
Lawmakers challenged a 51,000-strong teacher lobbying group to adopt clear, measurable benchmarks.
The landscape is littered with great ideas, tried, tested and in some instances shown to improve the learning experience.
Smaller classes, specialized educators and reconstituted schools with strong principals are pieces of the mosaic.
Test scores gauge progress, but few have known how best
to employ reams of data that seldom make their way into the actual arena for application - the individual school and the individual classroom. The norm has been to teach to the test and not to promote the digestion of knowledge.
For Gov. Phil Bredesen and his reform agenda, the days are drawing down.
Poor results or the expectation of such were the norm.
The out-of-control health care program, TennCare, threatened to leave the state's fiscal condition on life support.
The funding formula for K-12 public education punished counties like Hamilton because there was a lack of political will once more to step in the middle of a rural versus urban county issue.
Now in his final year the opportunity emerged, in the disguise of a federal race for money, to institute structural changes from kindergarten to college.
Achievement may be measured by being awarded almost $500 million in federal money that will flow into the K-12 system. That is a down-payment for reaching the top.
But the Race to the Top is more; it is structural, perhaps even irreversible.
It is tying teacher evaluations to the knowledge gained by students - a novel idea, apparently, for educators who resisted this move at every turn. The Race to the Top is a success even if not a single new federal dollar flows into Tennessee. There is a knowledge exchange that is tied to accountability.
For those who gain knowledge in high school, the benefit is going to college better prepared and completing the requirements within a reasonable time to earn a degree.
But staffing the offices, the laboratories and workplaces and the entrepreneurial cubicles with a collection of the best and the brightest - measured not by social class but by desire to achieve - is the broader pay out from the Race to the Top.
To reach Tom Griscom, call 423-757-6472 or e-mail tgriscom@timesfreepress.com.