I found a lot of over complicated solutions and decided to write my own using a Handlebars helper.
With this partial (using Jquery) …
window.Handlebars.registerHelper('select', function( value, options ){
var $el = $('<select />').html( options.fn(this) );
$el.find('[value="' + value + '"]').attr({'selected':'selected'});
return $el.html();
});
You can wrap selects in your Handlebars template with {{#select status}}…
<select>
{{#select status}}
<option value="Completed">Completed</option>
<option value="OverDue">OverDue</option>
<option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
<option value="None">None</option>
{{/select}}
</select>
and end up with this…
<select>
<option value="Completed">Completed</option>
<option value="OverDue" selected="selected">OverDue</option>
<option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
<option value="None">None</option>
</select>
Presto!