To the editor:

Two years ago, I heard Colorado State Senator Michael C. Johnston address a diverse gathering of educators at the Education Nation conference: teachers and principals from all over the country and from all types of public schools.

In that address, I was struck by his lucidity and his thoughtfulness. Johnston speaks and writes as one who had spent a lot of time pondering complex issues. This makes sense, as he’s faced those issues firsthand; as an educator, he worked in some of our country’s most challenging environments. After teaching in Mississippi, Johnston led two of Colorado’s alternative schools, placements that often end up as final stops for the children our schools can’t figure out how to teach. Most importantly, Johnston seems driven to ensure that all our schools serve children as they deserve, giving them the opportunity to reach their fullest potentials—a standard of excellence that no one, I think, would seriously argue we’ve reached.

I was surprised, then, to see that petitioners are protesting his invitation to speak at the Graduate School of Education’s convocation. Their statement asserts that “Johnston embraces a vision of education reform that relies heavily on test-based accountability while weakening the due process protections of teachers, a vision that we believe ultimately harms students and communities.” On these grounds, they call for the Graduate School of Education to rescind Johnston’s invitation.

Reasonable people who care about children can disagree on the best ways to improve our schools. To think differently is to ignore valid concerns and make productive dialogue impossible. All over the country, educators are working on solutions to persistent problems—how do we serve kids who come from challenging environments, who enter school behind their peers in reading and math, or who have a wide range of special needs? How do we ensure that under-resourced urban and rural schools get students to where they need to be, and how can we make the American public school system a model for the world once again?

No group has a monopoly on these answers. To shut out the wisdom and experience of an entire swath of educators—charter or traditional, union or reform, Democrat or Republican—is to deny the best shot to actual children who, as you read this, are not getting the education they deserve for want of those answers.

I am not a student at the GSE. I sympathize with those who have worked hard to gain knowledge and skills that will help them serve students and who now find themselves unenthused by their school’s choice of speaker at their convocation. I also respect the conviction of those who challenge a perspective that they believe will not help children.

But given the raging debates in our field, it’s certain that any speech that everyone agreed with would be boring and useless. As an educator and a member of the greater Harvard community, I hope that sharp conversations about these subjects would be welcome at our University.

M. Aidan Kelly ’08