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Teacher Absence in the United States
Yesterday I looked at teacher absence in the developing world, highlighting India where a quarter of teachers may be absent on a given day. Teacher absence isn't that high in the United States but it is still shockingly high. On a typical school day, 5-6% of teachers are absent, i.e. equivalent to an absence once every 20 days!
Bearing in mind that the typical school year is 180 days, add absences to all the school holidays, teacher workdays, staff development days (btw, ever seen a Walmart shutdown for a staff development day?), and other non-teaching days (e.g. in Fairfax, Mondays are half-days) and the number of days of true teachng greatly diminishes.
Teachers probably do get sick more often than other workers but teacher absence rates are three times higher than for managers and professional employees in the private sector. Moreover, are you surprised to learn that teacher absences are most frequent on Mondays and Fridays or that teacher absences are of a duration just short of that requiring medical certification of illness?
Finally, teacher absences reduce student achievement both in the United States and in the developing world.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 24, 2009 at 07:38 AM in Economics, Education | Permalink
Comments
Alex, you've got to be careful. Everyone knows that teachers are impartial agents of pure benevolence, who work harder than anyone else. If you attack them, you are evil.
Anyways, my mother-in-law is a retired teacher. She's had many student teachers over the years. Though she does actually believe that most teachers are impartial agents of pure benevolence, she does have this complaint: Back in her day, smart women became teachers. Now, dumb students become teachers. The kids who got As in high school and then went to good colleges rarely become teachers, but the B-/C+ students who went to lower quality colleges (and didn't flourish there) do. I wonder if she's right.
Posted by: JB at Sep 24, 2009 7:46:09 AM
Alex,
It's burnout. I'm friends with a few teachers. They have an absolute passion for what they do and still say that it becomes overwhelming at times. Many in the corporate world think that it's easier to deal with kids than adults. Not the case. Every job has its stresses and demands some down time. It happens that teachers demand a little more downtime than the average job.
RB
Posted by: Ryan Biddulphr at Sep 24, 2009 7:47:25 AM
Why is this surprising? Teachers are underpaid relative to the (excessive) job requirements, and the difference is made up by non-cash benefits, like lots of days off. And students correctly read their instructors lack of focus as a sign that school is not as important as everyone claims, hence the rise of the mandatory bachelor's.
Posted by: Eric M at Sep 24, 2009 7:57:20 AM
A 5-6% absence rate doesn't mean that teachers are absent once every twenty days.
Posted by: Trey at Sep 24, 2009 8:17:19 AM
Don't forget that children are mobile petri dishes for any illness going around, so a teacher's workplace risk for illness is probably higher than that of an office worker.
Posted by: conrad at Sep 24, 2009 8:20:58 AM
Teachers in my high school received one personal/sick day a month as part of their compensation. Many of them took it, almost always to create a long weekend.
Posted by: David Pinto at Sep 24, 2009 8:21:08 AM
@Trey: Alex thinks that all spells of absense originate from the same distribution. Which is almost as stupid as his P(A|B)=P(B|A) fallacy a couple of months ago. Its far more likely that a small group of teachers are absent all the time (think burnout, like #2), and a large group which is almost never absent.
(btw, ever seen a Walmart shutdown for a staff development day?)
How many Walmart employees are grading papers in their "free time"?
Posted by: JSK at Sep 24, 2009 8:23:19 AM
I'm sure the reason for absenteeism isn't that teachers are "underpaid", but rather that it's typically very difficult to fire them.
Posted by: Andy at Sep 24, 2009 8:31:10 AM
The first comment issued a good warning, as the following comments repeated the myth that teachers are underpaid and overworked. Science and math teachers may be underpaid compared to, say, engineers or accountants. But teachers with degrees in subjects such as history and English tend to be paid better than museum staff or journalists. Total compensation is high when you add in free time, medical benefits and retirement packages, including 403(b)s.
As for the cause of absenteeism, part of the reason in the U.S. is probably the low penalty for the employer. If I don't show up for my job, there's no substitute that can be called in to do the work.
All I said is true mostly for high school teachers, by the way. Elementary teachers are paid low wages (underpaid is a subjective term) and burn out quickly. But that's a positive in some ways. Wrangling seven year olds is probably a job best left to the young.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Sep 24, 2009 8:48:15 AM
What is the absenteeism rate for professors (all causes - if you fail to be personally present for any of your assigned classes, you are absent)?
Posted by: capitalistimperialistpig at Sep 24, 2009 8:55:21 AM
The 5% number makes sense. Odds are that they're on a contract that says they get 1 sickday a month. Assuming 20 workdays, that means about a 5% absence rate, since well, if you give a person a sick day every month, they'll often use it (on a mental health day occasionally..) That sounds like a straight contract issue.
The pay thing kind of bugs me. In a city district, a teacher can easily start at a higher salary than an economist just coming out of college.
I think it comes down to prestige. Teaching just isn't prestigious. Sure we say nice things about teachers, but it's not really something you see either the geeks pursuing (computers and engineering), nor the upwardly mobile types (business). Teaching is more of a fallback occupation. I don't know how you make it more prestigious except for maybe trying something I saw in the economist: Forget class size, make it harder to become a teacher. After a while, people will probably get wind of the fact really motivated people are teachers, and some of them will want to do it to, since on some level, we choose our jobs based on the kind of people we want to be around.
Posted by: Bellisaurius at Sep 24, 2009 8:57:26 AM
I suspect that a decent part of the 5-6% is due to maternity leave in which a teacher might be out for three months.
My wife is a 3rd grade teacher and during the school year, she needs to go to bed about 1-2 hours before me (I'm an engineer). The time lost sleeping is approximately equal to the time she gets off in the summer.
I've never been one to say that teachers are underpaid but those who argue that teachers have it easy are not looking at the whole picture.
Posted by: Steve R at Sep 24, 2009 8:59:08 AM
Let's stop beating around the bush and admit to ourselves that outsourcing teaching to a finely tuned corp like Walmart would clearly be in everyone's best interest.
Posted by: Trevindor at Sep 24, 2009 9:04:55 AM
It's refreshing to hear someone point out these bogus "development days." Teachers already get 14 weeks off per year. Yet we need to shut down the school every two months for a day to teach them something?
Another troublesome issue: half days. They count as full days towards the 180-day target. You'll find them scattered throughout the year, for only the vaguest of reasons. And last year in Massachusetts, we had to make up a snow day at the end of the year last June. With a half-day, of course.
As for sick day abuse, you will find it is extremely common in every government job. Employees get X of them per year, and they use them exactly like vacation days. Unlike the private sector where your boss would condemn you for abusing the privilege, in the public sector it is expected. It's not like a government employee is setting back the organization on a rush to hit a deadline or anything, so who cares?
Posted by: Jim at Sep 24, 2009 9:07:21 AM
Let me suggest a libertarian spirited experiment: offer teachers the choice of 5.2% higher pay with no paid sick days - if you can't come to work, you don't get paid - or the current system. See how many choose each option.
Two more versions of the same experiment in behavioral economics: offer to pay for unused sick days at (1)the end of each school year or (2) retirement.
Posted by: capitalistimperialistpig at Sep 24, 2009 9:12:06 AM
My wife is also an elementary school teacher. She gets 10 sick days and 3 personal days per year for I believe a 190 day contract. If she used all of those per year, that would work out to a 6.8% absentee rate. Her pay stubs show accrued sick days, though, and she has 110 of them after 13.5 years of teaching, maybe working out to a 1-2% absentee rate. I think that this is fairly common, so to have an average rate of 5-6%, I think that either long term disability or maternity must be a factor in the data. When she first started, she was sick all of the time, due to the above pointed out germ problems and hygiene "flexibility" of 7 year old kids. Often, she went in sick anyway, because very little learning goes on with most substitute teachers.
Posted by: liberalarts at Sep 24, 2009 9:15:44 AM
My daughter is a teacher of the deaf, and my wife was a special ed. teacher. They do get vacations for sure, but they also put in typical 10 to 12 hour days and get paid (barely) for 8. For the dedicated ones, it is a burn-out proposition, 10 years, tops. For the 9-5'ers it's an o.k. life. What do you want for your kids? That's why merit pay would go a lot further than tenure in securing a good education for all the "yoots" out there.
Posted by: Dennis Elliott at Sep 24, 2009 9:25:11 AM
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review (or one of its affiliates) ran an investigational piece where they showed the top absentee days for Pittsburgh teachers. ALL of them followed Steelers games. This wasn't just a case of the Mondays as some games occurred on Thursday and Monday too. Also, if the game went into overtime or otherwise ended late the effect was more dramatic.
When the Steelers went to the Super Bowl last year, the public schools decided to start 2 hours late on Monday. They said it was to reduce student absenteeism, but I wonder if it wasn't also because of the teachers.
Bottom line: Teachers say they want to be treated and paid like professionals...but professionals shown up for work no matter how tired or hung over.
Posted by: Mo at Sep 24, 2009 9:25:41 AM
Teachers do not get 14 weeks off per year. They are paid based on 9 months but have the choice to distribute their paycheck over a 12 month period. Most prefer this as it is easier to budget.
This does somewhat undercut the underpaid argument.
Posted by: Micah at Sep 24, 2009 9:26:29 AM
I get an absurd amount of vacation time considering the fact that I have the entire summer.
Posted by: josh at Sep 24, 2009 9:28:50 AM
I should point out that teachers get sick a lot for obvious reasons.
Posted by: josh at Sep 24, 2009 9:29:52 AM
How about comparing absenteeism in public schools vs nonreligious private schools vs religious schools?
Posted by: B.B. at Sep 24, 2009 9:31:25 AM
Interesting topic, here are a few issues:
1) Pay is a REAL issue: In NYC a public School teacher cannot afford to live anywhere "decent". Relative to most jobs, the hours required to do it well and right are tremendous ( I come from a family of educators). Also, those that do it right get no additional income; for many, the best approach is to do the minimum not to get fired.
2) Unions are an issue: It is hard to fire a teacher. Very. (Mom was a principle and was TOUGH on union teachers who would/could not perform; most who were not up to her standards either left, or renewed their commitment to education.
3) Organizational Culture is an issue: Like above, leadership and vision can make a difference. I am sure a microscopic (A macro stat is not very informative to draw inference from) look at the data would show differences between school districts (maybe pay across district is a good factor to look at; socioeconomic status of students? Neighborhood?), and then within school district differences between schools.
Posted by: Joe at Sep 24, 2009 9:36:59 AM
As usual, the commenters respond by arguing about the average teacher. But even if the majority of teachers are hardworking, dedicated and asked to do impossible things, the inability to fire (or to even threaten or reprimand) the 2-5% worst performers makes the situation much worse. Indeed, it probably contributes to the feeling that the good ones are overworked and underpaid. The bad ones make trouble for the whole school and also show the not-quite so good ones that it's ok to slack off (influencing them **at the margin**). The good ones are frustrated and have to do more to make up for the worst.
Posted by: jjn at Sep 24, 2009 9:37:51 AM
My sister is a high school teacher, a strong performer, and libertarian. Her rationale for taking sick days is that it's "use it or lose it" and there is little incentive not to take the days as teacher salaries are more closely correlated to tenure than performance in her district.
Her previous experience was working for a hedge fund, so I trust her when she says that teaching is more difficult than people expect. She agrees most teachers are overpaid relative to their performance. The average compensation isn't the issue, the small variance is.
Posted by: Phil at Sep 24, 2009 10:00:46 AM
