Education Secretary Arne Duncan is sitting on $4.35 billion. Can he deliver for children?

Read The Daily Caller’s interview with Arne Duncan here.

Arne Duncan is sitting on a very large pot of money – $4.35 billion to be exact – that is looking more attractive by the day to states who continue to get hit hard by economic recession and see still leaner times ahead.

The problem is that Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, has vowed to give the money only to state school systems that make meaningful reforms to create greater accountability for teacher performance and student results.

Duncan’s resolve is going to be tested in the next few months, leading up to the first round of awards in late April or early May.

The former college basketball player and good friend of President Obama’s who was profiled by the New Yorker this week, talked a tough game during an interview Tuesday with The Daily Caller (full transcript here) that touched on the Race to the Top program and other subjects.

“If anybody is holding back reform then we simply won’t fund those states,” Duncan said. “There’s still some expectation that we’re just going to fund every application that comes in, and I can absolutely assure you there are going to be many more losers than winners.”

But the bleak economic conditions in many states, combined with built in bureaucratic institutional and union interests in most systems, mean that Duncan will be under “enormous pressure on him to give this money out politically rather than based on good policy,” said Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs at The Education Trust.

“A lot of these states are pretty broke. So people will be scrambling for money. Members of Congress will be calling him. Governors will be calling him, saying, ‘Can’t you find a way to help me out?’” Wilkins said.

Asked whether teacher unions will try to in some cases hold school systems back from the toughest accountability measures for teachers, Duncan said there has been “tremendous support” for RTT. He said over 600 local union leaders had signed RTT applications.

But, said Andrew Smarick, of the Fordham Institute, “he didn’t mention all of the local unions that didn’t sign on. That number far eclipses those that did.”

“Also, many of those that agreed to cooperate were in states that put together weaker proposals,” Smarick said.

Duncan vowed he will be “very tough-minded about this and so where folks are playing games and trying to perpetuate the status quo or resistance to change, we’re simply not going to fund them and it’s going to cost their states hundreds of millions of dollars, literally.”

He added that a second round of awards will give those who miss out on the first round a chance to mend their ways.