Utah is officially out of the first round of a race for a piece of $4.35 billion in federal dollars for schools.

The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday a list of 16 finalists for Race to the Top money for education reform. While Utah did not make the list, the state can apply for money during a second round in June.

But state education officials aren't yet sure if they want to try again. The state had asked for $250 million for school reforms and seemed, in many ways, a good candidate.

"We're very disappointed," said State Superintendent Larry Shumway, who spent part of Thursday trying to persuade state lawmakers to preserve education funding as they worked on next year's budget. "We'll have to wait and receive feedback from the reviewers before we decide our next step."

Christine Kearl, the governor's education director, said the money would have been a boon for Utah. Utah now has the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation and the highest student-to-teacher ratio.

"It would have been incredible at a time when our financial resources are dwindling," Kearl said. "What this would have done as far as resources in the classroom, resources for teachers, it would have been incredible."

Utah school districts and charter schools stood to gain anywhere from $50,000 to $22.5 million each if Utah had won. In all, 40 states and the District of Columbia applied for the money.

Utah spent hundreds of hours working on its 217-page application. The governor, state superintendent and state school board chair all signed off on it. All 41 of the state's school districts agreed to join the state's Race to the Top quest.

"It's disappointing that we worked so hard and didn't make the cut," said Steven Peterson with the Utah School Boards and Utah School Superintendents associations.

Some were surprised Thursday that the feds rejected Utah's plan. In many ways, Utah seemed a good fit for Race to the Top's aims, which included rewarding states for being supportive of charter schools, for allowing teacher evaluations to be linked to student academic growth data and having sophisticated data systems. Utah already uses a data system that follows students individually, has no law prohibiting linking achievement data to teacher pay, has a teacher performance pay pilot program in place and has more than 70 charter schools.

The Center for Education Reform recently ranked Utah's charter school laws as fourth strongest in the nation, and lawmakers have moved in recent days to pass legislation that would remove Utah's current limits on charter school enrollment growth each year.

At least one of the states chosen as a finalist, Kentucky, doesn't even allow charter schools.

The largest teachers' union in the state, the Utah Education Association, sent a letter of support with Utah's application, and most of the state's charter schools were supportive as well. Not all the finalist states earned such broad support. A number of Florida school districts, for example, refused to sign on.

But U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday no one thing determined the list of finalists.

"There are many, many factors we were looking at," Duncan said. "There was never going to be one deciding factor. Every state had relative strengths. Every state had relative weaknesses."

Nearly 50 reviewers scored applications on a 500 point scale, and all the finalists scored at least 400 points. Duncan said there was a "natural break" between the states that scored more than 400 points and those that scored fewer. The U.S. Department of Education won't release reviewers' specific comments on each application until winners are announced in April.

Utah's reform plan had included such goals as lowering the number of students who don't graduate from high school by 5 percent a year and decreasing the number of students who don't test on-grade level in reading and math by 5 percent a year.

The state also wanted to hire someone to help oversee early childhood education in Utah, keep extended-day kindergarten programs going, create tools to measure teaching quality, revise the state's high school exit exam, improve training for math teachers and give the same type of help to troubled high schools that now goes only to troubled schools that receive federal funding.

Debra Roberts, state board of education chair, said she was troubled that Colorado was the only western state to be named a finalist, especially because many western states like Utah already face funding challenges because large areas of public lands that don't earn tax revenue for schools.

Roberts said the state will still pursue the reforms, with or without the money; changes just might take longer without it. She said she hopes Utah can apply in the second round in June.

Duncan said Thursday he expects the department will award less than half of the $4.35 billion to states during this first round.