Forty-six days and counting, holidays included, before the state’s Race to the Top application is due in Arne Duncan’s hands. But if the state’s plan is any closer to completion than last week or last month,  the state officials leading the  effort aren’t saying.

At the last hearing on Race to the Top before the Assembly’s Education Committee on Wednesday, Deputy Superintendent Rick Miller and Kathryn Radtkey-Gaither, the governor’s undersecretary in his Office of Education, were mum on details. One got the distinct sense that they weren’t being cagey  because they’re  worried that Texas will steal their ideas. Its’ because the plan is still largely unformed.

And that’s making superintendents, school boards and unions nervous. Within the next month, they’ll be expected to sign memorandums of understanding  committing to the terms of the plan in order for their districts to get a share of the federal money. California could be eligible for as much as $700 million of the $4.3 billion one-time federal largesse.

Sherry Skelly Griffth of the Association of California School Administrators told Chairwoman Julia Brownley and the education committee that she had no idea how many districts would sign on to Race to the Top. It’s like asking them to commit to build a house without seeing the blue prints or cost estimates.

To ease their concerns, she said, the Legislature should pass legislation holding districts harmless from any commitments they make in an MOU if the state doesn’t actually win a Race to the Top grant. And they should also be held harmless from any mandates or changes to the state plan made after districts sign an MOU, she said.

Patricia Rucker of the California Teachers Association indicated that the union was discouraging local chapters from signing an MOU until they’ve seen the state plan, because of potential effects on their bargaining agreements.

Miller expressed optimism that most of the state’s largest districts would sign on. Los Angeles Unified and the next nine largest districts comprise half of the state’s  6 million public schoolchildren. (Update: It’s about  quarter, not half. See reader’s correction.) But Miller also acknowledged that  the feds will rate the application not on the percentage of kids covered by MOUs, but by the percentage of districts that take the pledge. California has about a thousand districts, plus charter schools. So it will be a challenge to line up any significant proportion before mid-January.

The state plan must address Duncan’s four key elements of reform: improving teacher and principal performance; using data to enhance student performance;  creating rigorous standards and assessments, and transforming around the worst 5 percent of the lowest performing schools.

Any district with a school in that lowest 5 percent must comply with the state’s plan for turning them around. But otherwise, districts could pick and choose which reform elements they’re interested in, Miller said.

Knowing they face a hard sell, Miller and Radtkey-Gathier implied that districts really had nothing to fear. The state’s plan would “ramp up” initiatives that the state has already started dealing with data and formative assessments and will contain “nothing brand new,” she said.

But in trying to present their undisclosed plan as non-threatening, they also made it sound unexciting. And that’s hardly a winning strategy.

Note: Brownley and Speaker Karen Bass were to reveal their version of Race to the Top  legislation on Wednesday. But it hadn’t been released as of late yesterday.