When I was interviewed on the Charlie Rose a while back, the interviewee who preceded me was the CEO of a major corporation in the high-tech sector. As I listened to him, I headed him say again and again, “We have to constantly re-invent ourselves. We re-invent ourselves every few years, or we die.”

I understand why that would be true in the fast-moving, ever-changing world of high technology.  If you don’t come up with new products, faster ways of doing things, new applications, new paradigms, etc., you are left behind, you lose, you disappear.

But this way of looking at the world and adapting to the moment is not right for every form of human endeavor.

Schools, like families and religious institutions, evolve to meet new social demands. None of these basic institutions look precisely as they did a century ago. We have new configurations of all of them. But none changes overnight. None reinvent themselves very 2-3 years. Basic human institutions require stability to function well. There must be a measure of predictability, not constant upheaval and churn.

Some people think that the unceasing changes in society promotes mental illness. I don’t know if that is true, but it sounds plausible. We are all under tremendous stress: economic, societal, environmental. We need solidity and stability in parts of our lives, not planned disruption and engineered chaos.

This teacher wrote a thoughtful comment about the need for stability.

An excellent school runs like a finely-tuned engine. There are literally hundreds of formal and informal procedures that make a school environment positive and efficient.  These procedures have been developed over time and what works in one building may not work in another, depending on such simple things as physical layout of the school, the number of staff available, the scheduling of things like lunch, recess and bathroom time, the scheduling of specials such as art, music and physical education (IF you have these), and the storage and access to teaching materials. It also depends on more complex items such as the positive behavioral intervention strategies that are used to ensure a positive learning environment in a school.  It is veteran teachers who know these finely tuned procedures.  You cannot write them down and hand them on a list to a teacher new to a school.  They have to be learned little by little with the help of experienced teachers.  Teachers are dependent upon each other.  Cooperation takes an understanding of these procedures and it takes personal knowledge and trust in other teachers. This takes time to develop and energy from both the new teacher and the veteran teachers. The higher the teacher turnover, the more energy and time spent learning, revising and teaching these procedural strategies.

One simple example from last year:  I was assigned a different classroom.  The change was from a relatively isolated room on the second floor to a room off the main entrance hall to the school.  As a teacher of students with cross categorical special education needs, I am in and out of my room often.  Many of the students need a learning space that has few distractions.  It took many extra hours and experimentation to develop a classroom layout that met the needs of the children and was also welcoming to parents and other visitors to the school.   I need my materials at my fingertips and my students need stability.  Each rearrangement of the classroom meant re-teaching procedures to students and some trial and error with materials placement.  Was educational time maximized last year?  No.  Was my stress level higher?  Yes.  Was my work load larger?  Yes.  Did it all work out OK?  Yes, because other teachers had my back, I knew all the other hundreds of small things that make this school run well, and I knew my students and they knew me.  This small change made a difference.  Imagine changing numerous teachers from school to school.  You don’t need research to answer the question of why high turnover decreases learning.  Just ask a veteran teacher.