Do Teacher Absences Impact Student Achievement? Longitudinal Evidence from One Urban School District

Abstract

Rates of employee absences and the effects of absences on productivity are topics of conversation in many organizations in many countries. One reason is that high rates of employee absence may signal weak management and poor labor-management relations. A second reason is that reducing rates of employee absence may be an effective way to improve productivity. This paper reports the results of a study of employee absences in education, a large, labor-intensive industry. Policymakers' concern with teacher absence rests on three premises: (1) that a significant portion of teachers' absences is discretionary, (2) that teachers' absences have a nontrivial impact on productivity, and (3) that feasible policy changes could reduce rates of absence among teachers. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the first two of these premises; it discusses the third premise. We employ a methodology that accounts for time-invariant differences among teachers in skill and motivation. We find large variation in adjusted teacher absence rates among schools. We estimate that each 10 days of teacher absences reduce students' mathematics achievement by 3.3 percent of a standard deviation.

Do Teacher Status, Gender, and Years of Teaching Experience Impact Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement?

“…Sick leave and unpaid leave had statistically significant relationships with ELA achievement, and professional leave was significantly related to mathematics achievement. Miller et al (2008) explored the impact of the number of days the teachers were out of the classroom on fourth-grade students mathematics achievement. The results of the study suggested that when teacher absenteeism increased by 10 added days, student achievement in fourth-grade mathematics declined by at least 3.2% of a standard deviation.…”

Industrial actions in schools: strikes and student achievement

“…In the case of teacher absences instructional time is not reduced, but it is disrupted through the use of substitute teachers. Miller, Murnane, and Willett (2008) is a recent study examining this issue. They use teacher fixed effects and an instrument based on local weather conditions to account for unobserved teacher quality correlated with absenteeism.…”

Influence of Attendance Policy Implementation on Faculty Absenteeism: Issues and Prospects for Policy Upgrade

“…In the absence of control policies, teachers respond to changes. For example, "teachers who are required to report absences directly to their principal by telephone are absent less often than teachers who report their absences indirectly, to either a centralized reporting centre or a school-based message machine" (Miller et al, 2007). It is of great importance that policy-makers know that interventions implemented should last longer than a year, to really see the impact of the interventions made.…”

“…A plethora of researches conducted underscored that attendance has significant effects on student achievement (Joseph, Waymack, & Zielaski, 2014) (Roby, 2013) (Tingle et al, 2012) (Miller, Murnane, & Willet, 2007) (Sezgin, Koşar, Kılınç, & Öğdem, 2014) (Iqbal, Muhammad, & Haider, 2015). Prior to the student achievement however, the schools should ensure that the teachers are in the classroom to perform their responsibilities.…”