Experience matters.  But what do I know?

On the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, there was a story about the relatively short tenure of new teachers in charter schools.  The story included a quote that left me, in the words of my British friends, utterly gobsmacked:

“Strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers,” said Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America. “The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.”  (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/education/at-charter-schools-short-careers-by-choice.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

To be fair, the article explains that new teachers in some charter schools receive a great deal of supervision, mentoring, and feedback, sometimes before they even set foot in a classroom.  Which is obviously a really good thing that undoubtedly makes them better teachers.  Of course, the article also says that studies show that a lot of teacher turnover has adverse affects on student achievement.

I’m not an education expert by any means, and I know very little about Wendy Kopp other than her Teach for America thing.  But as the mother of two children who’ve been educated in public schools for the last 12 years, I do have some thoughts about teachers.  Which basically come down to this:  experience in teaching is just like experience in any other field — it matters.

It’s not the last word on your value as a teacher.  Or your value as a lawyer, or a neurosurgeon, or a hedge fund manager, or a figure skater, or a supermarket cashier, or a journalist, or a mechanical engineer, or an architect, or a bus driver, or a real estate agent, or a groundskeeper at the U. S. Open, or the CEO of J.P. Morgan, or the Governor of New Jersey, or the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

But there is a reason you want the lawyer arguing your case — whether it’s a case before the municipal court or the U.S. Supreme Court — to have some experience in litigation.  It’s the same reason you want your realtor to be a member of the “Top Sellers Club” (or whatever they call it), the reason that the Yankees have won more World Series than any other baseball team, and the reason you hire a real plumber, no matter how well your brother installed the laundry sink in his basement.

Sometimes, of course, long experience in a given profession just makes you cranky.  Everybody has a colleague who’s just phoning it in, no matter what field of endeavor you’re engaged in — teacher, bank manager, U.S. Senator, Sears clerk, parent.  Some people have a lot of experience and learn absolutely nothing from it.

Sometimes being new to your job means it’s easier for you to color outside the lines, to think outside the box, to bring a different perspective to a tough problem.  And some people are just geniuses at what they do right from the get-go, whether they are Mozart, middle-school teachers, or the guy who tiled my bathroom.  (Really.  He looked like a high school sophomore but he is a veritable artist with subway tile and grout.)

Mostly, though, in almost every field, we think experience is a good thing.  We think experience is a good stand-in for things like good judgment, maturity, and maybe even wisdom.  We know that experience isn’t a substitute for good judgment, or that you can be ignorant no matter how long you do something.  We know that energy, enthusiasm and creativity are not the exclusive purvey of the young.

But I think it is only when we talk about education reform that we say things like, “Strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers.”  What does that even mean?  Would we say that a baseball team with six rookies on the field is a better team than one with experienced players at all nine positions? Would you voluntarily fly across the country in an airplane staffed with pilots and officers who were all new to their jobs?  Study after study explains that going to the hospital in July, when all the new interns and medical resident arrive, raises your risk of dying by 10% or more.  Would you schedule your kid’s tonsillectomy in July because, hey, the strongest med schools develop their students tremendously so they can become great in the operating room in just a year or two?

All other things being equal — even though they never are — I’d put my child in a classroom with an experienced teacher instead of a first- or second-year teacher any day. And I bet Wendy Kopp would too.