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

Abstract

This article exploits highly detailed data on teacher absences from a large urban school district in the northern United States to shed light on the determinants and effects of teacher absences. The topic is important because both school and district policies can influence teachers' propensity to be absent. The authors estimate the impact of teacher absences on academic achievement of students matched to elementary school teachers. Models include fixed effects for teachers to control statistically for potential correlation between time-invariant levels of teachers' skill and effort and their rates of absence. The authors estimate 10 additional days of teacher absence reduce mathematics achievement of fourth-grade students by 3.2% of a standard deviation. They employ an additional instrumental variables strategy to bolster the case for a causal interpretation of results. Instrumentalvariables results indicate the impact of unexpected teacher absences on student achievement is larger than the impact of anticipated absences.

Do Principals Fire the Worst Teachers?

“…First, I use teacher absences because they are measured extremely well, they are easily interpretable, and they impose substantial financial and nonfinancial costs on the school, which has to arrange for and pay substitutes. Moreover, several recent studies have documented that teacher absences have a strong, negative association with student achievement, which provides evidence that this association is causal (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2009;Miller, Murnane, & Willet, 2008a, 2008b. 12 Indeed, in other work using Chicago data from a similar time period, I show that a teacher's absences are negatively associated with principal evaluations of the teacher and with a teacher's value-added contribution to student achievement (Jacob & Walsh, in press).…”

“…High achieving schools are schools with above median mean proficiency rates (or fraction at national norms in high schools) across the 2001-2002, 2002-2003, and 2003-2004 qualifications and/or performance (e.g., absences, educational background, prior evaluations) in making their dismissal decisions. There is some evidence that subjective principal ratings (Jacob & Lefgren, 2008) and teacher absences (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2009;Miller et al, 2008aMiller et al, , 2008b are associated with student learning. However, to the extent that one views student achievement as the primary outcome of interest, one should directly assess how a teacher's ability to improve student achievement influences the likelihood of dismissal.…”

Absence from Work: A Study of Teacher Absenteeism in Selected Public Primary Schools in Uyo, Nigeria

“…Studies (Woods and Montagno, 1987;Banerjee and Duflo, 2006;Miller, et al, 2007;Whelan, 2008;and Clotfelter, et al, 2009) have indicated that teacher's absence negatively affect student's academic performance. Common sense tells us that successful learning outcomes can only occur when pupils are taught by teachers who applies effort-is present in the classroom and spends time actually teaching so as to maximize instruction.…”

How Much English Language Arts and Mathematics Instruction Do Students Receive? Investigating Variation in Instructional Time

“…We recognize that when a teacher is absent and a substitute teacher takes over, some form of instruction may still take place. We do not, however, consider days when the teacher is absent to constitute regular instruction as students are likely to be busied with rote and undemanding work (if they do any relevant work at all; Miller, Murnane, & Willett, 2008). However, not all possible days are used for instruction.…”