According to her bio on the Huffington Post, “Sabrina Stevens Shupe is a teacher, writer, and activist who has worked with students in struggling communities in Philadelphia and Denver. She recently launched the Failing Schools Project, which aims to empower teachers, students, and parents in so-called “failing” schools to share their stories about what it’s really like to work and learn in such schools, and to promote alternative ways of thinking about and solving the problems these schools face. She is currently working with several grassroots education organizations around the country to advance democratic solutions to educational problems.”
We find her to be among the most articulate of the folks who actually work with kids, understand the fallacy of the current (past 20+ years) of school reform, and then write about it. As one in the field who sees kids every day, she realizes that these “reform” efforts are not working and just doing them harder is not likely to succeed either. In “Waiting for Mark Twain,” Shupe lists many of the difficulties teachers face daily and calls on the humor of Mark Twain to pop the bubble of ignorance surrounding the test and drill program in vogue across the country.
Follow this link to read this incisive account by one of the nation’s top teacher activists.
I appreciate Sabrina’s observations about school boards, data and educational policymaking.