Over the past year, many national leaders have committed to reform education and reshape America's school system. With this goal in mind, the Obama administration created a competitive grant program entitled Race to the Top (RTTT), which was passed by Congress as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). RTTT features two grant phases that will award a total of $4.35 billion in education funding and are focused on four key policy areas--standards and assessments, data systems, great teachers and leaders and turning around the lowest performing schools. In calling for reform, the U.S. Department of Education also recognized that states' efforts would be strengthened through "activities that promote school readiness and ensure that all children have access to high-quality early learning programs." To that end, education officials included "Innovations for Improving Early Learning Outcomes" as an "invitational" priority--that is, as a recommended strategy with no impact on scoring--in the RTTT grant application. This brief, "Pre-K & the Race to the Top", informs education advocates and stakeholders about the innovative strategies that states used to include pre-k in their Phase 1 proposals. Pre-K Now reviewed all 41 applications, but this brief focuses on those of the finalists, describing the role that pre-k played in each of the policy areas targeted by RTTT and highlighting particularly innovative examples. The brief also highlights avenues advocates and stakeholders can use to make pre-k part of their states' Race to the Top Phase 2 applications. Though the inclusion of pre-k ultimately has no bearing on RTTT award outcomes, this analysis showcases how states view pre-k within their larger context of education reform and how the early learning community can help to shape this vision with policy makers. (Contains 30 endnotes.)