For a good shot at $4 billion in grants from the federal Race to the Top Fund, states will need to make a persuasive case for their education reform agendas, demonstrate significant buy-in from local school districts, and devise plans to evaluate teachers and principals based on student performance, according to final regulations released last week by the U.S. Department of Education. Those three factors will rank as the most important to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his staff as they weigh states' applications based on more than 30 criteria, including how friendly their charter school climates are and how they use data to improve instruction. To win funding, states will have to do much more than lift their charter school caps or remove data firewalls between student and teacher data, said Duncan, who pushed those two issues in recent months to get states ready for the competition. The final regulations come after the department received 1,161 comments about the draft version during a 30-day comment period that ended in August. Many criticized the plan as being a one-size-fits-all approach to improving education. The comments also included biting criticism from the national teachers' unions, which objected to the emphasis on using student test scores in teacher-evaluation systems. The Education Department, however, largely stuck to its original approach, giving states a clear, detailed--though slightly revised--blueprint for how to win a Race to the Top grant.