On Tuesday, nine states and the District of Columbia were named grant winners in the second phase of the U.S. Education Department’s Race to the Top program, a competition for $4.35 billion in federal education-reform funds that was created as part of last year’s economic stimulus package...Some say the effort is already paying off. “More heavy lifting in education reform has already been done than in the past two decades,” says Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which advocates for improved national and federal policies.