The ratings are compiled from standardized test score results by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a private, nonpartisan, Atlanta-based research and education organization focusing on state policy issues, of which the condition of Georgia public education has been pretty much No. 1 on the list for the past couple of years.

All these local schools, and several others that made a good showing, deserve the positive attention they receive from this survey. At the same time, it should be remembered that they help to pull up the average for what remains, statewide, a dismal landscape.

Among the fifty states, Georgia has for several years ranked 49th for its students' educational attainment based on pretty much the same sort of tests. How each of the top-scoring local schools would fare against a national scale remains unknown because there is, as yet, no similar survey for all schools in the entire United States, although the federal government is working on implementing one.

On whatever scale, these top-rated local schools are plainly doing a solid job. They are doing things right and their communities should be proud of them.

Unfortunately, there is a flip side to consider that is equally worthy of collecting headlines. Those are the local schools at the bottom of the rankings.

Anna K. Davie in Rome, for example, was No. 157 out of the 157 elementary schools in Northwest Georgia and No. 1,076 out of the state's 1,096. Summerville Middle School was No. 314 out of the state's 416. Chattooga High was No. 261 out of the state's 323.

And, just as there were several area schools hovering near the elite top end of the listing, so were there several others seeming to compete in the race toward the bottom.

Both educators and politicians like to talk about achieving excellence in our public classrooms; administrators whose schools wind up toward the top of these scales even are inclined to claim they have achieved it.

Yet, looking ar ratings such as these, and remembering the state's overall miserable performance in national educational rankings, it is plain that excellence is not what is needed. What is needed is consistency.

The gaps between good and bad are huge and often occur within the same school system and geography. East Central and Anna K. Davie are only about a mile apart.

Would not students be better served, and shouldn't parents be happier, if the education the children are receiving was consistently average instead of fluctuating so widely? Shouldn't the goal be to first establish a solid middle "C" on the results scale instead of having "A" schools side by side with "F" schools?

One of the currently popular political refrains about education is that "no child should be left behind." That's a matter of perspective, isn't it? When one child or school is praised for being ahead isn't it only in comparison to another child or school that is bringing up the rear?

Some day Georgia's schools may indeed turn out to be uniformly excellent, though that is certainly some decades into the future no matter how many billions of tax dollars are used to seek such a happy outcome. The concern of the moment should concentrate on the obvious lack of consistency in the education that children are receiving today, right now.

Most resources and policy changes must address this condition and seek to bring all schools up to an average that is acceptable even though it may not be outstanding.

The problem in Georgia isn't that some students and schools aren't doing as well as the best elsewhere. It is that too many students and schools aren't yet within sight of becoming average.

The editorial states:

It is plain that excellence is not what is needed. What is needed is consistency. Would not students be better served, and shouldn't parents be happier, if the education the children are receiving was consistently average instead of fluctuating so widely? Shouldn't the goal be to first establish a solid middle "C" on the result scale instead of having "A" schools side by side with "F" schools?

Consistency is "agreement with what has already been done or expressed; conformity with previous practice." Consistency in rankings is precisely what we find in the Greater Rome schools. Certain schools, as we have seen, consistently rank quite high among Georgia schools, while other schools consistently rank very low among Georgia schools.

With all due respect, I find it simply audacious to suggest that our students would be "better served" and our parents would be "happier if the education the children are receiving was consistently average instead of fluctuating so widely."

What students? What parents? What does a "consistently average (a solid "C") school look like?

What parent does not want the very best education possible for their child? Which parents of children in higher ranking schools would be happier if their children were in an average (a solid "C") school?

What we have here is a call to mediocrity - the quality or state of being mediocre. Mediocre is defined as "neither very good nor very bad; ordinary; average."

Think about this for just a moment in the context of the world of sports and medicine. The whole purpose for entering into sport competition is to do well - the best one can do - and hopefully win! How long would Floyd Medical Center or Redmond Regional Medical Center stay in business and attract good medical personnel, not to say anything about patients, if their goal was to be an average (a solid "C") medical facility?

At the risk of taking something very complex and extremely serious and dealing with it in a cursory manner, may I submit that it is entirely bogus to suggest that students would be better served and parents would be happier "if the education the children are receiving was consistently average instead of fluctuating so widely."

Excellence is not the wrong goal. Excellence is the right goal. Our goal as parents and educators should be to provide an excellent education for all our students in all our schools. We should accept nothing less.