Are Teacher Absences Worth Worrying about in the U.S.?

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Abstract

Using detailed data from North Carolina, this paper examines the frequency, incidence, and consequences of teacher absences in public schools, as well as the impact of a policy designed to reduce absences. The incidence of teacher absences is regressive: when schools are ranked by the fraction of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, schools in the poorest quartile averaged almost one extra sick day per teacher than schools in the highest income quartile, and schools with persistently high rates of teacher absence were much more likely to serve low-income than high-income students. In regression models incorporating teacher fixed effects, absences are associated with lower student achievement in elementary grades. There is evidence that the demand for discretionary absences is price-elastic. Our estimates suggest that a policy intervention that simultaneously raised teacher base salaries and broadened financial penalties for absences could both raise teachers' expected income and lower districts' expected costs.

Introduction

Whatever the importance of strong training, classroom experience, or advanced pedagogical methods for the scholastic development of students, these factors can have scant effect on a day when a teacher is absent from school. Teacher absences are an endemic problem in developing countries (Banerjee and Duflo 2006; Chaudhury et al. 2006). Baseline teacher absence rates in the range of 20 to 44 percent have been reported in studies of policy interventions in Kenya and India (Glewwe, Ilias and Kremer 2003; Duflo and Hanna 2005). Interventions designed to reduce teacher absence, or improve teacher performance generally, have met with mixed success in these settings (Banerjee and Duflo 2006).

The rate of teacher absence in the United States is much smaller than in these developing countries, and the availability of substitute teachers may further lessen the potential harm from teacher absences in this country. Previous studies suggest absence rates for teachers in the U.S. on the order of 5%, or about 9 days per 180-day working year.² Perhaps for this reason, there exists surprisingly little research on teacher absences in the United States. Compared to workers in other occupations, however, American school teachers appear to have relatively high rates of absence. By comparison, ostensibly similarly measured rates of absenteeism due to sickness average less than 3% in the U.S. workforce as a whole.³ This introduces the possibility that policies specific to public education have contributed to the elevated absence rate, and that other policies could be used to reduce it.⁴ Potential social gains from reduced absenteeism include improved student discipline and achievement, and reduced expenditures on substitute teachers.⁵ Previous literature provides conflicting evidence on whether teacher absences are consequential for student achievement in America, where certified substitute teachers are widespread (Ehrenberg et al. 1991; Miller, Murnane and Willet 2007). Absenteeism may also have a regressive impact, in which case interventions to reduce it could promote equity as well as efficiency.⁶

This paper aims to address the questions of frequency, incidence, and effect, as well as the potential impact of leave policy, using data on public schools in North Carolina. We show that the pattern of absence-taking across schools in North Carolina has a disproportionate impact on low-income students. When schools are ranked by the fraction of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, teachers in the lowest quartile average almost one extra sick day per school year, compared to teachers in the highest quartile. We also document that elementary students perform worse on standardized tests when they are assigned to teachers who take more absences. This relationship persists in models that incorporate teacher fixed effects. This finding corroborates the work of Miller, Murnane and Willet (2007). The estimated magnitude of the achievement effects is small, but aggregated across all students in a classroom they imply a non-negligible impact of absences on aggregate achievement.

Our study of the potential impact of leave policy on absences follows several existing studies on the subject. Ehrenberg et al. (1991)'s detailed analysis of teacher contracts for a large sample of New York school districts revealed that certain provisions were associated with higher usage of leave.⁷ Currently some districts in the U.S. offer bonuses for teachers who take a minimal number of absences; one district raffled off a new car among all teachers with perfect attendance. At the school level, some schools distribute to teachers at the end of the year any unused funds earmarked for substitute teachers.⁸ A randomized evaluation of a comparable bonus program for teacher attendance in India found that the teacher absence rate was halved in treatment schools (Duflo and Hana 2005). In addition, administrative rules covering teachers' reporting of absences have also been associated with differential rates of teacher absenteeism (Imants and Van Zoelen 1995).⁹

We evaluate the impact of a North Carolina policy that permits teachers to continue taking sick days once they have exhausted their supply of "free" days, at the cost of $50 per day. The dependence of available sick days on the duration of a teacher's employment history and the number of sick days taken in prior years generates idiosyncratic variation in the point at which teachers face a price increase. Our estimates, derived from a modified form of survival analysis, indicate that the likelihood of taking an additional sick day, on the margin, is significantly lower when the cost is $50 rather than zero. Back-of-the envelope calculations suggest that applying the $50 penalty to all sick days starting with the first would reduce the average number of sick days taken by slightly more than 1, or about 15%. Given the savings that would result from cutting back on the use of substitute teachers, districts could raise base salaries sufficiently to increase teachers' expected income while still realizing cost savings.

The second section describes the data used in the present study and summarizes the broad patterns, the third analyzes correlates of absenteeism, the fourth focuses on the distribution of teacher absence across schools, the fifth section examines the effect of teacher absence on student achievement, and the sixth evaluates the impact of financial penalties on absence-taking. The paper ends with a brief conclusion.

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