Illinois failed to win part of the $3.4 billion Race to the Top federal funds for school improvement and education innovation that were awarded on Tuesday by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Missouri was eliminated earlier in the process.

The winning states in the Race to the Top grant competition were Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia.

Judges reviewed the 36 proposals submitted in the second round from 35 states and the District of Columbia.

Michael Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute think tank on education issues, called the mix of winners "a disastrous outcome for the administration," writing on his blog on Tuesday, although he said he saw no evidence that partisan considerations had colored the outcome. States widely considered as leaders in innovation like Colorado and Louisiana, Petrilli said, had been excluded, while others with what he called merely mediocre plans for improving their schools, like Ohio, were winners.

"The lofty rhetoric of the Race to the Top has turned to farce," Petrilli wrote.

Congress appropriated more than $4 billion for the competition, which aims to promote educational innovation in areas Obama considers crucial to education reform.

After Delaware won $100 million and Tennessee $500 million in the first round in March, $3.4 billion remained, which Duncan distributed all but about $75 million of that to Tuesday's winners, and was still deciding what to do with that remainder, he said.

New York and Florida each won $700 million; Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio won $400 million; Massachusetts and Maryland won $250 million; and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia won $75 million.

Illinois was hoping to use as much as $400 million from Washington. After finishing fifth in the first round, Illinois dropped to 15th out of 19 finalists in the second.

"We're going to continue to implement reforms that we put together as part of our application," state schools Superintendent Christopher Koch said in an afternoon conference call with reporters. "We were very cognizant in Illinois that we wanted to make an agenda around reforms that we knew were needed."

Missouri ranked 30th among states that applied. Missouri education officials say they will continue pushing some of the initiatives called for under Race to the Top.

Obama has requested $1.35 billion for a third round of "Race to the Top," but there's no guarantee the program will continue.