SpringBoard: Listen to the parents, students, teachers

To the editor:

The community is in an uproar over the new SpringBoard curriculum at the Delaware Valley schools.

Before this major education policy change was made, the district should have taken more input from its stakeholders: parents, students, teachers. Instead, those stakeholders are now reacting to SpringBoard – and it isn’t pretty.

SpringBoard is a curriculum sold by the College Board to prepare students for its Advanced Placement (AP) tests.

The College Board is a “non-profit” organization that pushes the agenda of “college for everyone,” which, let’s be honest, really just means tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-in-debt-and-four-years-of-summer-camp-and-frat-parties for everyone – a $160,000 slip of paper that can’t guarantee a graduate a job with a salary that is more than the tuition rate their parents paid for four years.

That digression aside, what the College Board doesn’t publicize is where your taxes, which fund SpringBoard, are going: Its CEO’s $830,000 salary and the organization’s half a BILLION dollars in profit every year. Some “non” profit, huh?

And if the College Board’s unsatisfactory record with the Better Business Bureau doesn’t make SpringBoard look bad enough – the students, parents and teachers hate it.

DV apparently communicated poorly with its stakeholders while planning and implementing SpringBoard. Parents and students are complaining at school board meetings, in the newspapers, even on Facebook.

Some of the district’s best teachers say off the record they felt left out of the process – that they weren’t asked to evaluate the curriculum they’re now forced to teach. Springboard is harming the children in our community, they say. Some top teachers say the administration is suppressing their opposition, and they don’t want to put up with the nonsense.

The administration and school board need to seriously take their stakeholders’ opinions into consideration – especially its teachers.

Hopefully those in power can clean things up before our best teachers get fed up and before our students’ education is put in more jeopardy.

To the new decade,

Ryan Balton
DV ’07
Syracuse, N.Y.

TU letter from Goldsack makes broad, debatable claims

The following letter from Taxpayers United is circulating among residents of the Delaware Valley School District.

The letter is similar to Bob Goldsack's letter to the editor that recently appeared in local newspapers. It gives sole credit to the Taxpayers United board members for various accomplishments of the school district since the last election.

One particular eye raiser is the claim that Taxpayers United has "added 45 co-curricular activities." According to an email from co-curricular chair Sue Schor, this number is not true.

"I have a recent list of all the co-curricular and clubs that we now have at the elementary, middle schools and high school," Schor said in the e-mail. "This list is from February 09. We do not have 45 new ones."

Schor said Goldsack may have mixed the numbers up.

"I am pretty sure Mr. Goldsack is referring to clubs that are held through the PTA, which I do not think the board should take credit for," Schor said. "This is hard working parents that volunteer their time for the students."

Taxpayers United
"Higher Education, Lower Taxes"
3237 Sunrise Lake
Milford, PA 18337

Dear friends of TUA,

Another election cycle is upon us for the DV School Board. We would like to thank you for your past support, but before we can ask you for your continued support, we need to review whether or not we kept our promise of "Higher Education, Lower Taxes".

1. We kept our promise of a 0% tax increase, and combined with the Homestead Act, resulted in a reduction in taxes of $379.00.

2. We promised you that we would resolve the issue of the contaminated drinking water at our Dingman's campus. By March 2009, our children will be drinking clean and safe water. We were able to do this without raising your taxes.

3. We added 4 AP courses (Advanced Placement Courses, for college prep). Without raising your taxes.

4. We added 45 co-curricular activities (after school programs). Without raising your taxes.

5. We are re-vamping our curriculum from K-12, to help our students think critically, which in turn will increase their SAT scores, that will result in higher $ in scholarships and entrance into better colleges. Without raising your taxes.

6. In today's unpredictable world, we hired armed school police for the safety of our children. Without raising your taxes.

7. We enforced a strong drug and gang prevention policy, which has proven to be effective. How do we know this? While many of our youth have protested this strong policy, the fact remains that there have been fewer drug related expulsions this year than the last school year Without raising your taxes.

We would not have been able to accomplish this without your support. We respectfully ask for your continued support in the upcoming Primary election. Our candidates this year are: Robert Goldsack, Benny Marasa and Patti Wright. Your donation is greatly appreciated and your check can be made payable to: The Committee to Elect Goldsack, Marasa, Wright. Thank you.

Respectfully,
Robert Goldsack
President, Taxpayers United
"Higher Education, Lower Taxes"

View an image of the original letter

Gazette roundup: AP scholars and football

• College Board names 43 DVHS students AP Scholars
• DV Warrior football

Also some photos I took at the music department benefit concert appeared in the print version of this week's Gazette.

View more photos from the concert

Courier Roundup: Schor sworn in, Special education roundtable, AP scholars

• Court decides on Schor for school board seat vacancy
  
• Special ed meeting coming up at DV
  
• College Board names 43 DV students AP scholars
  

Class of 2008 report: 84 percent seek higher ed

High school guidance chairperson Jay Tucker presented his annual report on the graduating class at the July 17 school board meeting. 

Of the 448 graduating students, 84 percent will be going on to institutions of higher education, the lowest percentage since 1999, though only by a few percent, according to the report. Local scholarships added up to $184,260 and students received $3,705,900 in scholarships from their colleges and other sources.

Doubling last year's number, 26 students will enter the military.

The class of 2008 improved SAT scores by 17 points from 1505 to 1522, according to Tucker, who uses the highest score in each section of the test to compute the average, rather than using the College Board's approach that only includes the latest assessment from each student. Colleges look at the highest score in each section from all of the times students take the SAT, Tucker said.

Of the 446 Advanced Placement enrollments in the 2007-08 school year, 71 percent received a passing score of 3 or higher on the five-point AP test scale. The national average is 57 percent. 

Among Delaware Valley's 22 AP course offerings, students in the two new courses in the 2007-08 school year performed extremely well: 100 percent of the AP Statistics students received a 3 or higher and 84 percent of the AP Government and Politics students received a 3 or higher, according to Tucker's PowerPoint slideshow.

A whopping 620 enrollments in AP classes are expected for the 2008-09 school year. That figure includes multiple enrollments by single students.

More information, including a list of colleges that students are attending, can be found in Tucker's report, which is available exclusively to download here. (2.4 MB .PDF file)