Show me the grades

To the editor: How sweet the eager faces and precocious desire for learning of the elementary students featured in the Courier every week. How sweet the fact that these, our kids, outscore their peers on statewide and nationwide achievement tests. How sad that those same kids, as they wend their way through the Delaware Valley system, will, year by year, lose ground against their peers until, by the time they approach graduation, they are scoring well below their peers on those same standardized tests. Saddest of all is the knowledge that bright and willing children enter our system as above-average learners and leave it below average and turned off to education. The longer they remain in the Delaware Valley system, the lower their scores and the worse their outlook. What on earth are we doing to these kids? Tony Splendora Milford