Teacher Absenteeism Affects Student Achievement
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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 2/20/2008 1:40:00 PM
Does teacher absenteeism have a direct impact on student achievement? You bet, say Harvard researchers Raegen Miller, Richard Murnane, and John Willett, who are examining the effect of teacher absences on fourth-grade test scores in a large, urban school district.
SLJ spoke to Miller about his findings, which show that just 10 teacher absences in a school year can lead to a significant loss in math achievement. When the regular teacher is gone for two weeks, that absence can set students back for the same amount of time—and even more.
What impact does teacher absenteeism have on student test scores?
The impact is educationally significant. One reason is that schools serving concentrations of students living in poverty tend to have higher levels of teacher absence. In other words, teacher absence compounds the already 
troubling equity problems in public schools.
Do substitute teachers have lower credentials than regular teachers?
Only North Dakota requires substitutes to have the same kind of credentials as regular teachers. Roughly 20 states do not even require substitutes to have baccalaureate degrees. This is astonishing to Canadian, British, or Australian observers. If students spend an average of two-thirds of an academic year in the presence of substitutes, why wouldn't substitutes need to be as qualified to teach as regular teachers? The answer is complicated, of course, and money is part of the story. There are certainly policy questions worthy of attention here, but they haven't made it up the list as yet. Perhaps a convincing link between increased teacher absence and lower student achievement will spur more discussions.
Doesn't all this contradict No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which requires a highly qualified teacher so kids can meet math and reading requirements?
NCLB has a provision requiring districts to notify parents when students wind up in classrooms without highly qualified teachers. This can happen when a teacher simply isn't highly qualified or when a long-term substitute steps into a vacancy. We should note that "highly qualified" is a somewhat foggy notion in the first place, but the gulf between an average substitute's qualifications and those of a regular teacher is pretty large, on average. This is certainly part of the inequity story that NCLB is meant to throw sunshine on, if nothing else.
How many absent teacher days does it take to really affect kids’ learning?
Ten days is roughly the average number that teachers are absent for any reason. Recent findings suggest that 10 additional days of absence reduce fourth graders’ math achievement by roughly two or three percent of a standard deviation. A key point here is that the estimate pertains to an average impact. In classrooms with the least qualified substitutes, the worst coordination between teachers and substitutes, or other complicating conditions, the impact of teachers' absences could be higher. My [research], in fact, offers evidence that truly unplanned absences, when the likelihood of high-quality subs, lesson plans, and coordination between the teacher and substitute is lowest, have a much greater negative impact on student achievement. In addition, there's evidence that the absences in the months preceding the achievement test have a greater impact on achievement.
Are there certain subjects more affected than others?
My research efforts focus on elementary mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA)—and the impact on mathematics is greater than on ELA. This is because students have lots of exposure to language and text outside of the classroom, but most of their exposure to mathematics happens in the classroom.
Are there certain states that are experiencing this problem more than others?
The work out of Duke University highlights that rural districts have greater trouble with teacher absence than urban and suburban districts, on average. It's a fair bet that districts that have the most trouble recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers are also ones where issues around teacher absence are most pressing, but I haven't worked with data that allow me to explore these questions yet.
