My wife was talking to some mothers the other day about public versus private school. She’s worked as a K-2 teacher in both settings for years and as I listened on, something she said really caught my ear.

Overall, she believed, administration at private schools were all about teaching to the top. Push it, set a rigorous pace and work your best students long and hard. That was the mantra. The rest will catch up — or at least follow along. Kids in private school, that’s what they do – top work. And this is what parents expect.

In public schools, she notes that it was all about the low end kids. Get them caught up. Raise the bottom. Sure, work to serve the middle and the high but the “top kids” they were not the ones who were to get the oomph. The ones who lacked the most were the ones that were supposed to be offered the most.

Private worked one way; public the other. Quite telling indeed.

–Which is right?
–Can both realistically be done?
–Can a school raise the bottom while simultaneously teaching to the top?
–Can a school teach to the top while simultaneously raising the bottom?

Theoretically, lots of folks — especially people running for some sort of political office –will say both can be done. But in practice, I am not sure I really see it accomplished all too often.

Me, I do believe — like my wife — that most schools choose and, whether it’s resources, intentions or merely the nature of the beast, it’s rare to find a campus that accomplishes excellence at both ends of the scale, for both the top and for the bottom. (Maybe excellence is too strong a word. Simple okay-ness might be a better word choice.) They either, as a campus, really do well by the top kids or, as a campus, spend a heck of a lotta time working to serve the “low” kids.

And doing that well is hard enough. Few of us really knock it out of the park on this front… or rather, I should say, not enough of our schools do.

And so, the question is, top or bottom?

Well, if you look at the way that NCLB rewards a school’s test score data, it’s a no brainer. Elevate the bottom and you are rewarded. That’s where all schools get the most bang for the buck. Seek out the lowest achievers and make them higher achievers. Do that and your scores go up.

Have the top kids perform at an even higher level and… you really will not see much of an increase.

Now Arne Duncan seems to realize this and has thus put forth Race to the Top. It’s a GREAT notion. However, unless they change the formula of evaluating our academic institutions, we’ll still see more schools look to the floor before the ceiling.

Which groups gets most of the dialogue around your campus?

You want the top or the bottom? Welcome to America’s bunk bed educational mentality.

Let’s be honest… I am soft.

I mean I have a wife and a three year old daughter and the idea of setting sail to go to war where there’s a possibility that I may come home in a body bag is a choice I have never had to face. (Thankfully.)

The mere idea of it sends chills up my spine. And really, I am not sure if I have — or would have ever have had — the stomach to do it. And while I am anti-war and all that other “left-wing, Southern California” stuff, the fact is I have never had to face some of the hard decisions that people and families in the military have had to face.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I admire the heck out of them for their sacrifice, guts and convictions.

Forget the politics of it all. (Which is hard because war is politics in so many ways.) Veteran’s Day is a holiday with real meaning for many, many real people.

I mean my own grandfather left a pregnant wife (my grandmother was 7 months along with my father, their first) when he was but 21 years old to go do his duty in WWII.

He slept in foxholes. He ate crappy food. He even did latrine duty cause of his smart-ass mouth. (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? LOL!!)

But he lived. (He’ll be 89 on X-Mas day.) Yet I never really understood what any of that meant until I became a dad myself.

Leave my pregnant wife to cross the world and go spend my days getting shot at not knowing if I’ll ever return to see my child or spouse? Uhm…

Veteran’s Day is the day to salute thousands and thousands of people who have made a sacrifice that is, if you think about it, almost mind-numbing in the scope of what it asks and potentially can take.

Hats off to the veterans and their families. Though a dude like me may not often seem to reflect it often enough, I admire the heck of out you.

And I hope it is not an affront for a non-military person to say that I really do salute you.