Ed Sec Arne Duncan will announce Race To The Top finalists tomorrow at 1:00 pm during a speech to the National Press Club. Michele McNeil and Lesli Maxwell at PoliticsK-12 have posted their best guesses at who will make the first cut of this second round of the Federal competition, and New Jersey is on the list.

In the first round this past Winter New Jersey came in 18th, missing the finals by 2 slots. (There were 16 finalists.) For this second round Duncan had said that there will be between 10 and 15 winners, so it’s reasonable to assume that the list of finalists will go as high as 20 and we’re in like Flynn. Here’s McNeil’s and Maxwell’s list: Arkansas, California, Colorado, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, NJ, NY, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

Andy Smarick’s going to hit the ground running.