WASHINGTON – One in three Arizona teachers was absent for more than 10 days in the 2009-2010 school year, slightly better than the national rate of 36 percent, according to a recent report.
The author of “Teacher Absence as a Leading Indicator of Student Achievement” said Arizona’s 34.1 percent rate is likely due to the relatively high number of charter schools in the state and generally less-permissive policies in Western states.
“It has to do a lot with district policy,” said Raegen Miller, who wrote the report for the Center for American Progress. “There is variation in teacher absence behavior, within districts, within schools that have the same policies.
“The policy climate in Arizona is less permissive for absences,” Miller said. “Western states tend to have less generous privileges than Northeastern states.”
Miller, who has researched teacher absences for eight years, said his report looked at 56,837 schools across the country. He concedes that the 10-day figure is somewhat arbitrary and said the report is meant to spark further research on the topic of absences, their effect on student performance and policies to deal with it.
Joe Thomas, vice president of the Arizona Education Association, called the report “interesting” but said he does not believe it represents teachers fairly. Thomas, who is also a high school teacher in Mesa, said it uses “catchy numbers to grab attention.”
“I never heard of this being a problem in Arizona,” Thomas said.
But Scottsdale Unified School District Associate Superintendent Jeff Thomas – no relation to Joe Thomas – said his district did get complaints from parents in the past about teacher attendance and decided to take action.
In an effort to keep teachers at work, he said the district two years ago began combining incentives with punitive measures that range from docking pay to termination in the worst cases.
“We do it in Scottsdale, and there has been a slight reduction (in the absence rate),” he said.
“A consequence of absence without permission – they don’t get paid,” Jeff Thomas said. “It works.”
Miller said incentives are one possible way to address absences, that simply cutting teachers’ sick and personal days is not the solution. Joe Thomas agreed that offering teachers incentives to keep their absence rate low makes for good policy.
“You always need to have carrots and sticks,” Joe Thomas said. “Incentives at a local level are positive.”
But that policy should be made locally and not at the state level, he said.
“What works in Mesa might not work in Tuba City,” Joe Thomas said.
For charter school operators, policy decisions about teacher absences are easier.
“Our schools don’t have money for substitute teachers,” said Eileen Sigmund, executive director of the Arizona Charter Schools Association.
She said Miller’s finding that charter schools have lower absenteeism did not come as a surprise. When a charter school teacher is absent, his class becomes the responsibility of other teachers on staff, adding to their usual workload, Sigmund said.
“It disincentivizes our teachers from placing that added work on co-workers,” she said.
Sigmund added that charter school teachers do not get time off for professional development, since such training is typically scheduled on vacation days or when school is over for the day.
There are 535 charter schools in Arizona, serving an estimated 144,802 students.
Bureau of Labor Statistics spokesman Gary Steinberg said Miller’s 10-or-more-days threshold cannot be compared to other statistics for the U.S. workforce as a whole.
While the BLS keeps statistics for the percentage of U.S. workers who take a week off in a given week – about 3 percent of workers in 2011 – the 10 teacher absences in Miller’s report could be taken all at once or scattered over the year. The two data sets are not at all comparable, Steinberg said.
Even if they could be compared, Joe Thomas said it is unfair to put absenteeism for teaching up against other occupations, where workers have more flexibility to set their schedules.
“Other jobs can give one day off a week, different jobs require different procedures,” Joe Thomas said. “You have to be careful what you compare teachers to.”
He said teachers work 8 to 4 every day, with no time for private business like going to the bank or having an annual physical.
“These are not excuses,” Joe Thomas said. “This is a complex issue.”
But Jeff Thomas has no problem comparing one aspect of teacher absence to other professions.
“In mostly any other job, when workers are absent, productivity goes down,” he said. “And it’s the same premise for teaching: If teachers are absent, quality of instruction goes down.”
He said a lot can be done to improve teacher attendance without devaluing their work and without punitive measures.
Miller’s report suggests as much, saying everything from a minimum number of sick days for teachers to greater use of hand sanitizer can help cut absences.
“It’s overboard when we’re not empathetic about needs they have,” Jeff Thomas said. “They’re human.”
one of the last posted at 3:19 pm on Mon, Dec 3, 2012.
It really is important for teachers to be in the classroom, when the alternative is giving the students a movie and a babysitter that they euphemistically call a substitute. i know I was one of them.
Mike McClellan posted at 4:12 pm on Mon, Dec 3, 2012.
As a retired teacher, I can tell you that it irked me to watch other teachers abuse absences. There are , of course, legitimate reasons to be out. And most teachers who are absent are because of those.
But there's a small number who take a lot of "mental health" days -- and principals should call them on it. They're hurting the kids when they take a lot of days off.
And they're paid to be there.
WesternConnections posted at 5:32 pm on Mon, Dec 3, 2012.
Bottom line: teachers miss more classroom time than the stats might show. Teachers, especially at the elementary level, are exposed to more infectious illnesses because of the environment in which they work, with young children whose immune systems are immature. In that regard, teaching is not at all like working in an office staffed by adults or working outdoors.
Parents may perceive that teachers are "absent" more than they really are, because substitute teachers are called in when teachers are out of the classroom for training, grade level consultations on or off campus, attending conferences locally or out of state ... all those are teacher absences to parents and students, including classroom disruptions that occur when teachers get together as professional learning communities, which is generally done on a weekly basis. When public school teacher absences actually are due to illness, there may be substitute teachers available or the class may be split with students parcelled out to other classrooms in that grade level. This definitely impacts learning, both on a daily basis and in the long term. We see that some school districts are placing high priority on preserving classroom learning environments when a teacher is absent; we agree that's a great idea.
On the other hand, there are situations like the one in Gilbert Public Schools where a principal assigned a National Board Certified Teacher to write an A+ Award application for her Gilbert school, ordering her out of her class for five half days and one full day to work on the application. The premise behind that award is that an entire school works on it, but that's not what happened in this case; perhaps this is true in other schools in GPS when they try to win awards.
The end result was that taking this teacher out of the classroom to write an award became one of the charges that Superintendent Dave Allison recommended the governing board adopt against her (#6) http://westernconnections.com/charges6-10.html Fortunately, the board unanimously withdrew all charges against the teacher, but not before an incredible amount of damage accrued.
JMJ posted at 7:31 pm on Mon, Dec 3, 2012.
Retiring with sick days that rolled over from year to year was a great incentive, for me, to not take unnecessary days off as a teacher--on top of the fact that no one could teach better than me with my students over the years. If I had to be out due to illness or due to the illness of one of my own kids, I always sought the best subs, chiefly former colleagues of mine with whom I had taught and knew they were the best, as well.
Being paid a fraction of the worth of my accumulated sick days was better than losing them. If there were ever any miniscule perq to teaching in Arizona, perhaps that could have been considered [by me] one of them--but, honestly? It still did not make up for the abyssmal pay, the idiots "in charge", and the current condition of "open season" on teachers, in general, which currently exists. With over 1/4 century in a profession, being more than highly-qualified, with college degrees that had me making less than plumbers. Yes, by choice, but I do not miss it. Fulfilled? Oh, yes, it's a 'ministry', I have 'changed lives'.
In all the years I taught, I only knew one person who abused sick days. Everyone else with whom I worked had a work ethic that never quit, a genuine love for kids, and a high tolerance for MPSBS. Don't miss the BS in any way! ; )
VofReason posted at 12:00 pm on Tue, Dec 4, 2012.
I think the hardest thing for non educators to understand is why they don't make better use of the summer for outside the classroom professional learning and the like. That isn't a teacher problem, that is the people who make the decisions for the teachers. Teachers are actually on the clock for 8-9 months a year with holidays, collegiate days (whatever that means) etc inbetween. Any comparison of salary between professions has to have that in the basis. The training and the rest is important, but why not pay them more to work more of the year and use the time when kids aren't in school to do the out of the classroom learning?
WesternConnections posted at 2:48 pm on Tue, Dec 4, 2012.
@ VofReason: Exactly. Yes, teachers take graduate classes and schedule many different types of professional development on their own time, most often during summer. If school districts want teachers available for additional work, professional development or anything else, they should pay teachers for that additional time and work. Students need to be in class for 180 days; why do we put that limit on teachers, except to limit their pay?
As it stands now, teachers are "expected" to show up for work a couple of weeks before the first student day to set up classrooms, confer with colleagues, participate in required training sessions, etc. etc. None of that time is paid. We all know that teachers take incredible amounts of work home at night so they can spend their days working directly with students (prep time has largely disappeared). Those additional hours are unpaid. Apparently, principals also assign additional, unpaid work to be accomplished during summers (see the Notice of Claim involving Highland Jr High). Teachers must be respected as the professionals that they are; we need leadership in school districts that recognizes teachers, not administrators, are the indispensible element in education.