In the brave new world of data-driven education reform, most states have learned how to talk the talk. Start with ``global competitiveness,'' add in some ``longitudinal data'' and ``transparency,'' garnish with ``accountability'' and serve.

But far fewer states are committed to more than the language of reform -- a reality made clear by the applications submitted recently to President Obama's Race to the Top grant program.

Race to the Top is the crown jewel of the Obama administration's education reform agenda and the largest-ever discretionary federal grant program for public schools. (In his State of the Union address this week, the president proposed adding an additional $1.4 billion to the pot of $4.35 billion.) The hope is that fiscally strapped states will make changes to ineffective policies and present comprehensive reform plans to be competitive for grants of up to $700 million. Indeed, Education Secretary Arne Duncan says that around a dozen states have changed laws or policies in response to the program thus far.

Still, now that applications are in, we can see that Race to the Top has some fast runners, some faux runners, some plodders and some states that never quite made it to the starting line. (Full disclosure: I gave unpaid advice to several states on their applications. Most of the 41 applications are now available on state Web sites, and I'm not rooting for any particular one.)

In Texas, where I taught for several years, Gov. Rick Perry, R, pulled the plug on the state's application, declaring, ``We would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children's future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special-interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington.''

The left can be as absurd as the right: New York put together a solid application with interesting proposals to alter the teacher certification process and experiment with merit-based pay. The legislature, though, needed to remove a cap on the number of charter schools. The cap stayed, and New York will lose the race this time around.

While the bumblers have made headlines, the heart of the administration's education agenda lies in the distinction between real and sham reform. Take New Jersey's Race to the Top application. The Garden State promises it will adopt new standards for students, change its data systems, provide teachers with computers for to-be-determined activities and convene a commission to devise a new teacher evaluation system.

But beyond all the promises, predicated on various commissions and boards miraculously completing complex political activities, there is little chance of reform trickling down to schools. The state asked school districts to sign on, but it gave them the option of signing on only to the pieces they liked. As a result, school district commitments to enact reform are a hodgepodge of assorted activities.

I'm picking on New Jersey not because it has the worst plan (it doesn't) but because it so perfectly embodies the old way of applying for federal education funding -- lots of promises and ideas; little chance of change on the ground.

By contrast, Louisiana submitted a clear, concise, actionable plan to reform a large swath of its public schools.

The beauty of Louisiana's reform model lies in its simplicity. The state has taken critical baseline steps, it proposes expanding projects that have shown promising results, and it has ensured that participating school districts will actually do the things that are in the application.