Federal data: 1 in 4 teachers skip more than 10 days of school a year

[davidn3600]

More than 1 in 4 of the nation’s full-time teachers are considered chronically absent from school, according to federal data, missing the equivalent of more than two weeks of classes each academic year in what some districts say has become an educational crisis.

The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights estimated this summer that 27 percent of the nation’s teachers are out of school for more than 10 days of regular classes — some missing far more than 10 days — based on self-reported numbers from the nation’s school districts. But some school systems, especially those in poor, rural areas and in some major cities, saw chronic absenteeism among teachers rise above 75 percent in 2014, the last year for which data is available.

In the Alamance-Burlington School District, located between Greensboro and Chapel Hill, N.C., 80 percent of its 1,500 teachers missed more than 10 days of school in the 2013-2014 school year. Cleveland reported that about 84 percent of its 2,700 teachers had excessive absences. Nevada’s Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas, reported that more than half of its 17,000 teachers were chronically absent — missing a total of at least 85,000 work days, or the equivalent number of hours that nearly 500 teachers would work during an entire 180-day school year.

While much attention focuses on the 6 million students who miss more than 15 days of school each year, making them much more likely to see low achievement and increasing the chances of not making it to graduation, teacher absences could be having a similarly negative effect on scholastic success. Superintendents and education policymakers say students need consistency in the classroom and high-quality instruction, noting that a parade of substitutes can seriously set back academic progress.
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School district administrators do not know what exactly is causing excessive teacher absenteeism. Some point to teachers taking sick leave, maternity leave and personal days to which they are entitled, and others attribute part of the problem to school climate; when teachers don’t feel motivated to go to school and teach, some of them just don’t show up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/1-in-4-us-teachers-are-chronically-absent-missing-more-than-10-days-of-school/2016/10/26/2869925e-9186-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html

[femmocrat]

2. I don't think it is right to assume that they are malingers.

I knew many teachers with serious health problems that required them to miss multiple days. One year, I missed 28 days due to a medical issue. Prior to that I had never missed a day in about 16 years! I had nearly 200 accumulated sick days.

Teaching is a stressful job and teachers get sick. It is difficult to schedule medical appointments and procedures after 4:00 or weekends. Some even get serious illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and other conditions that require long-term absences. You can't always schedule a serious illness over summer break.

[Lancero]

3. I never like how people point to pregnancy as a 'cause' to this.

On no, maternity leave, the world is doomed.

Guess some people and studies can't help but give blame to women for every issue the world faces.

Still though, with how poorly paid teachers are I can't blame them for low motivation. They are the ones who are supposed to help prepare the next generation, and what do they get? Shit pay and shit treatment.

http://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-gap-is-wider-than-ever-teachers-pay-continues-to-fall-further-behind-pay-of-comparable-workers/

[Bonn1997]

4. Do 1 in 4 miss 10 days a year in other areas of work?

Without a comparison group, it's hard to interpret this finding.

[Bucky]

17. As a teacher I take days off if I'm sick, if I have any appointment, to get my car fixed...

If I need to get caught up on grading right before report cards are due, since they don't really allow me time to finish grading student's work while I'm on campus. With most ordinary jobs, if you need to get your car inspected you can just arrange with the boss to come in a little late one morning or leave a little early one day. That's not a luxury teachers have.

I was a single parent. When my kid was living at home, a sick day for her was a sick day for me until she was old enough to stay by herself. Ten days seems to be a reasonable number. Calling that 11th day off "chronic absenteeism" seems pretty extreme.

[mulsh]

5. In 40 years of teaching my dad missed 7 days total. His district's contracts allowed teachers to

retain sick days and accrue them through out the years. He was able to convert the unused sick days, which amounted to over three or so years of pay, to retirement benefits which helped him retire early.

The district ended that benefit about ten years after my dad retired. Since like most employees teachers now must use them or lose them I think I see one reason why contemporary teachers are using them.

[Igel]

7. That's a relevant point.

I get so many sick days and so many personal days a year.

I get sick, my kid gets sick.

Or something happens. Dishwasher floods house. You need to have somebody home for the roofers or plumber when the water heater dies.

But some build up. Change districts for better job, you take the days or lose them. Usually such teachers are fed up or annoyed, so they take the time off.

If these were cable guys or factory workers, nobody would care. But they're teachers, not real workers.

[MichMan]

27. Sick days are not extra vacation days IMO

In my opinion, sick days are there if you are sick and can't come to work. They are not extra vacation days. If I am sick, I take a sick day. If not, I don't. I have no problem if I lose all the unused ones at the end of the year and frankly feel fortunate I wasn't sick.

I have worked in manufacturing plants for over 30 years. The vast majority of private industry including "cable guys or factory workers" do not get to accumulate unused sick days. I think being able to accumulate hundreds of "sick" days and cashing them out shouldn't be permitted.

[Mendocino]

6. Is there a reason to post this

other than to bash teachers?

[Bucky]

18. I'm a teacher. I don't feel bashed. It's a legit news item.

I do think it's crazy to call that 11th day off "absenteeism". It's a job designed to get an employee frequently sick. It's a job where you can't just "take a long lunch" if you have to renew your driver's license or take a sick child to a doctor's appointment or to see the dentist. If I need to get an eye exam or meet with a banker for a house loan, I can't just come in an hour later or leave an hour early that day. I have to take a whole day off and arrange for a substitute (sometimes I could take a half day; but admins hate for us to take half-days and it does tend to screw the sub (they're paid hourly) out of half a day's pay.

[Mendocino]

20. My sister was a teacher,

so is my son, as is my niece. I was in secondary education in college. I know full well what the job entails. It is bashing. My son subbed for years. Some would dig at him for not getting enough work as if that meant he were incompetent. If he did get calls then came the bashing on sitting teachers as lazy. The feeling that teachers are somewhat immune to sickness (which they get exposed to daily), that they don't have their own children that get sick, that they don't have elderly parents that need their time, or their own medical and personal obligations, is beyond the pale. All problems can't be shoehorned into basically two summer months.

[LeftyMom]

30. Teachers=women=evil

[LWolf]

8. I can't speak for the rest of the nation.

I can speak for my own building and district.

And before I do, I will point out that our contract allows a certain number of sick days per year, which can be used for being sick and for medical appointments. It also allows 3 days a year for personal business that can't be conducted other times. The only time I used the "personal" days in my entire career is when I traveled out of state to attend my son's wedding. It's not fucking "skipping" to use those days allowed by contract, and the nation really shouldn't want sick teachers in classrooms.

We have 22 certified staff members in the building. One of those...ONE...uses more days than his contract allows every year. Guess what? When he exceeds those days, he doesn't get paid. I agree, though, that he misses too many days. That's one in 22, not one in 4.

For the rest? None of us, barring some sort of medical crisis, takes as many days as our contract allows. None. We get to see, along with a bunch of other data, what that rate was, and what we spent on substitutes, building and district wide. It's transparent. And it's not anywhere close to 1 in 4 with excessive absences.

For me...I take a sick day once every few years, and it's always for a medical appointment or medical emergency. The last time I took a day off, it was because I came down with shingles. I actually drove to work thinking I could work through it, not really understanding how painful it would be. They sent me home. That was 4 years ago.

It's interesting that this seems to be such a problem elsewhere. I'm wondering, if these districts, like mine, pull teachers out of the classroom on a regular basis for meetings and trainings. You see, I agree that excessive teacher absences are detrimental to learning. While I'm almost never gone for medical or personal reasons, I am pulled out of the room for other things on a regular basis. So far this year, I've missed one day for a day long district office meeting. I was supposed to miss a half day today for another, and I lobbied my principal to go to bat for me, since it wasn't an essential meeting. I have 2 days before Thanksgiving break to spend out on two different projects. Does the general public understand how much work we do that is not directly related to teaching our students? Instead of actually providing paid non-student contact days in our contract, the district pulls us out and provides subs at a greatly reduced daily rate. It's about the chronically under-funded budget.

By the end of the year, I will have spent a total of 3 weeks working away from my classroom. Perhaps the Washington Post should lobby for funding to pay us to do all those jobs, adding days into the year or the summer that aren't taking away from instructional time.

[jcgoldie]

10. Do you have any stats on

How many days garbage collectors miss? Construction workers? Waitresses?

[dsc]

11. I think two things which help drive these stats is

1) many jobs don't have sick days so that if a teacher has a sick child and is married to someone who can't take off, the teacher does.

2) teaching is not a job that can be done by someone who is ill and thus ill teachers often take off when they might not if they were in a job that is easier to do when one can't talk for instance.

[hunter]

12. In many schools the work is extremely stressful. People who work with adults have no idea.

Imagine the worst "customer service" job, maybe you get a handful of over-the-top irrational customers every week. Teaching in a rough school you get dozens of over-the-top customers every day, and simultaneously while dealing with their outbursts, you are supposed to teach.

And it doesn't help that every day you're exposed to kids who are sick and spewing germs, often directly in your face.

Teaching at a big city public school was the toughest job I ever had. I'm not sure I could have made a career of it.

My wife's sister is a career teacher, but she is tough, immune to most diseases at this point, and still overflowing with altruism. She's still a good teacher. Some of her fellow teachers are burned out. You remember teachers like that: Sit down, shut up, read the chapter, and answer the questions. The walking dead teachers. They don't miss many days. They don't give anything of themselves to their classes either. Somebody who hates science, or math, or history, probably suffered teachers like that. None of those subjects are dry collections of facts to memorize for a test and then forget. These subject are alive and especially relevant to modern life.

In the U.S.A. people in altruistic professions are frequently underpaid, underappreciated, and abused.

The worst thing is that everyone thinks they could be a teacher because they were once a student.

I think one of my worst teaching stories was the day I noticed the kids in one of my classes were exceptionally quiet. I then realized they were listening to absolute mayhem next door, a substitute teacher yelling, kids yelling, and seconds later, glass breaking. A kid had thrown a desk through the window. After that the ENTIRE class, not wanting to get in trouble, ran out of the classroom as fast as they could. I peeked in and the poor substitute teacher was sitting at the teacher's desk sobbing.

I'd lost control of a my own classes a few times, but it's never been my nature to get into an authoritarian pissing match with thirty or forty overheated hyper-hormonal kids stuffed into a classroom built for twenty. At worst, and not being sexist because it really is this way, my out of control classes had groups of girls chatting and giggling, and boys bouncing around like ping pong balls in a bingo machine or throwing bits of crumpled paper at one another. Maybe it was a simple survival instinct, they outnumbered me and some of them were bigger than me. It's funny because one of the yearbook photographers caught me on a day like that and everyone was smiling, even me.

Schools ought to be nice places for the students, a protected place in a society that is sometimes dangerous, and a nice place to work for teachers, with adequate resources, decent pay, and the respect of school administrators, parents, and the community at large.

[B2G]

13. How much crap are they exposed to

Compared to other professions?

[Travis_0004]

29. Peobably less than doctors and nurses

Do 1 in 4 take 10 sick days a year? I doubt it.

[Blue_Tires]

14. I'm thinking some districts have use-or-lose days...

Either way, missing less than two days a month during a school year is nothing to lose my shit over...

[kwassa]

15. I didn't take a single sick day my first 8 years of teaching ....

didn't use my personal days, either.

I would like to see how much of the time in this study is due to maternity leave.

[Mendocino]

16. Still wondering?

any answer.....?

[CreekDog]

19. hit and run post

can't say i'm surprised.

[Mendocino]

22. Is this typical?

[CreekDog]

23. The subject matter is

Also, if this story was about a profession seen as generally male rather than female, he would not have posted it.

[malaise]

21. In my entire career of 25 years plus

I missed one day for my youngest sister's funeral - and I was never ever late for a lecture.
I've been very healthy all my life.

[apcalc]

26. SKIP? SKIP?

Revolting that you insert SKIP.

IT's too hard to SKIP. Lesson plans have to be written and given to someone to take for the day.
Every teacher I know goes to school even when not feeling well because IT IS HARDER sometimes to write plans for the day than just to show up and get through the sickness somehow.

[gollygee]

31. Skip?

Hmmmm.