Troubling new report sheds light on absentee teachers
While there has been a great deal of national focus on how teachers can be more effective in the classroom, little attention has been paid to how frequently teachers are missing from their classrooms.
A new study that looked at the attendance records of more than 234,000 teachers suggests that the typical teacher in the nation's public schools is missing an average of 11 days a year, which can have a significant impact on student learning.
Previous research has shown that when teachers are absent for 10 days during the school year, the decrease in student achievement is equivalent to the difference between having a brand new teacher in a classroom and one who has two or three years of experience.
"As common sense suggests, teacher attendance is directly related to student outcomes: The more teachers are absent, the more their students' achievement suffers," concluded the report that the National Council on Teacher Quality conducted.
The NCTQ, which has been advocating for better teacher preparation programs in the nation's schools, examined 2012-2013 teacher attendance records for school districts in 40 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.
The researchers concluded that 16 percent of the teachers were chronically absent, which they defined as being gone from the classroom 18 days or more. The report noted that an additional 28 percent of teachers were frequently absent, which the report defined as being absent between 11 and 17 days.
Among the 40 districts, only 16 percent of teachers were rarely missing from the classroom. The teachers with excellent attendance records missed an average of three days or less.
The report is actually underplaying the absenteeism problem because it did not count long-term absences of 10 consecutive days or more since they could include pregnancy/paternity leaves and serious illnesses.
The researchers discovered that attendance varied significantly among the school districts.
The school districts with the lowest absenteeism, in order, were:
Indianapolis
District of Columbia
Louisville, Ken.
Milwaukee
Tampa
New York
Philadelphia
The school districts with the worst absenteeism were, in order:
Cleveland
Columbus, Ohio
Nashville
Portland, Ore.
Jacksonville, Fla.
Buffalo, N.Y.
San Antonio
Because of previous research, researchers expected that the absenteeism would increase as the percentage of impoverished students grew, but this wasn't the case. More affluent schools were just as likely to have high rates of absences as low-income schools.
Schools districts have policies in place to discourage absenteeism, including allowing sick days to carry over from year to year, paying retiring teachers for unused sick days and requiring medical certification for sick time.
These common incentives, however, have not had a significant impact on teacher attendance. The research report said a difference seems to be traced back to what happens on the school level. More successful schools tend to cultivate an expectation that teachers will be in their classrooms. At some schools, principals require teachers to call him or her when reporting an absence. Another effective tool is having a policy of not hiring substitute teachers. A teacher might be less willing to call in sick if he or she knows that peers will have to deal with his/her students for the day.
