The Rell administration is once again defending itself against criticism that a recent federal grant application was insufficient.

Last week U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney took a lot of heat from the governor's office for concluding that the state's application for $192.7 million in federal education funding had little chance of gaining approval. Courtney told our Editorial Board that Connecticut would probably not get a dime of the $1.35 billion in funding under President Obama's Race to the Top program, at least in the first round.

Courtney's impression was that the application process was rushed, "cobbled together pretty last-minute," and without enough input from superintendents. It would likely not match up well with the more detailed information found in other state applications, he said. Adding to the impression of a rushed process was the state's method of delivery -- a young staffer headed to a getaway weekend in Washington with her fiance drove it down to barely beat the deadline.

The Rell administration did not take kindly to what it saw as a slight by Courtney.

"People worked nights and weekends to make this happen," said Tom Murphy, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. "It was a great day for the department."

Now comes more negative information about the state's application. ConnCAN, a state education advocacy group, compared the state's application with those from Colorado, Delaware and Florida. ConnCAN also does not expect Connecticut to win any first-round funding.

It had this to say about how the Connecticut application measured up:

"The findings? Not good," writes the agency on its Web site. "Turns out Connecticut left 120 blanks in its application, which as (ConnCAN) CEO Alex Johnston put it, is equivalent to a college applicant submitting a transcript full of incompletes. With so much required information missing in its application, it's unlikely that Connecticut will win money in Round 1."

Not so fast, says Rich Harris, a spokesman for the governor.

The 120 blanks in CT's application referenced by ConnCAN are all concerning baseline data and annual targets for the next four years in the following areas:

-- Percentage of LEAs (Local Education Agencies) that have a qualifying evaluation system for principal and teachers, based on the Federal definition of effective or highly effective principals and teachers.

-- Percentage of LEAs that measure student growth, based on Federal definition in the application.

-- Percentage of teacher and principal preparation programs for which the public has access to data on achievement and growth, based on Federal definition in the application.

-- And finally, percentage of teachers and principals in both high and low-poverty schools and high and low minority schools, who are highly effective, based on federal definition of highly effective in the application.

States were clearly instructed, said Harris, that if they did not have the evidence requested for a given criterion, the state should respond that it does not have the data and that the lack of data would not disqualify the state from scoring points on a criterion.

In addition, during a technical assistance conference in Baltimore, he said, the U.S. Department of Education further articulated that state's should not make up baseline data and to provide a reform plan as to how the State would collect baseline data and set annual goals. This is clearly articulated in the state's application, Harris noted.

Currently, each local school system negotiates and establishes their own criteria for evaluation of teachers and principals, which may or may not meet the federal definition of effective or highly effective. Therefore, no data existed to serve as baseline data for a new comprehensive state evaluation system, Harris said.

So there you have it -- the administration making the case it did the best it could given the federal constraints, but critics saying it came up short.