Determining the negative effect of teacher attendance on student achievement

A review of the literature reveals the effect of teacher absenteeism on student performance has not been empirically studied. A sample of students and teachers from two school districts, Gillette, Wyoming and Elkhart, Indiana, was obtained. For the students, third and fourth grade Iowa Test of Basic Skills dataAwere obtained. Matching teacher attendance data for the same period were then used as predictors of student grade equivalency change scores. As hypothesized, students with teachers who had fewer absences were found to have had significantly larger improvements in grade equivalency. Implications of teacher absence behavior are discussed.

Criticism of education by the American public has been reflected in an increased number of studies on school performance conducted since 1982. Student test scores are one of the primary targets of this criticism. By the mid-1970s, academic indicators began to reveal a steady nationwide test score downturn. For example, the number and proportion of students who received high scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test dropped dramatically. Not only college entrance examination scores, but other tests taken by students in junior and senior year of high school, have shown a marked decline. (Ravitch, 1986)

The now famous report, A Nation at Risk (1983), has documented a number of problems with the U.S. educational performance. For example, in comparison to other industrial nations, the United States has never finished first or second in student achievement test scores, but has finished last in seven of 19 tests. Further indicators suggesting the decline of the quality of American education are that 20 million American adults are illiterate and 13 percent of all 17 year-olds in the U.S. are considered functionally illiterate. (A Nation at Risk, 1983) Recently, Gerald Bracey (1992,1995) has suggested that the crisis has been blown out of proportion by critics of education. While his comments have some merit and that many of the comparisons which are made are not appropriate, his observation should not, however, be interpreted to suggest that there are no problems in education and that certain procedures and systems could not be improved.

More recently concerns about the American educational system have focused on educational expenditures. State legislatures and local school boards have had to deal with escalating health insurance costs, increased demands for student services, increased lawsuits with attendant attorney fees, and teacher demands for increased salary and fringe benefits.

Teacher absenteeism as a financial cost is one particular area which has been the focus of research. (Ehrenberg, Ehrenberg, Ehrenberg, and Rees, 1991) In a recent analysis of substitute teacher pay cost, three individual school districts in northern Indiana were surveyed. The results showed that nearly 1 % of the total operating budget for these school districts was consumed by substitute teacher costs. (Woods, 1996) In this era of increased educational costs, dollars spent due to employee absences for salaries and fringe benefits needs closer examination.

While the financial costs associated with teacher absenteeism are significant, they do not reflect the possible cost of teacher absenteeism on student achievement. The learning model of education in the United States is based on StudentTeacher interaction. (Elliott, 1979) When the student or teacher is absent, a violation of one of the model's assumptions occurs. Lewis (1981), for example reported in his article that, nationally, 75,000,000 student-teacher contact hours are lost annually due to teacher absenteeism.

The time lost to teacher absenteeism is a national problem, but it is more significant in large urban school districts which have disproportionately higher teacher absence rates. Detroit Public Schools had more than 120,000 teacher days lost to absences in 1980-81. These absences cost more than 6.2 million dollars.

A Nation At Risk (1983) offered some insight into the public's renewed concern for public schools. Increased state demands upon the public schools, such as increasing the number of credits required for graduation from high school, increasing the number of student-teacher contact hours weekly, and eliminating some school activities that previously pulled students out of the classroom are evidence of the public's growing concern for student achievement scores on tests. These demands are based on the assumption of the effectiveness of student-teacher interaction. (Elliott, 1979)

Should concern exist for the impact of teacher absences on student academic successes when substitute teachers are hired to replace absent teachers? While the question of cost is undoubtedly a very pressing problem for administrators, the long term effects of teacher absences on student performance need to be assessed. While there are few empirical studies of this question several attempts have been made to understand the impact of teacher absences. Among them, The New York Metropolitan School Study Council Report (1974) demonstrates substitute teachers are significantly less effective than regular teachers in the classroom (Olsen, 1971)

The study anecdotally suggests that the moment a substitute teacher is called to replace an absent teacher, everyone begins to experience feelings of uncertainty. No one the absent teacher, school administration, the students, or the substitute teacher knows what the day will be like. The substitute teacher will do the best he/she can under the circumstances, but no one truly welcomes the situation, other than the perennial classroom prankster. Additionally, the quality and reliability of substitutes is unknown. A recent incident where a high school substitute participated in a marijuana smoking session with high school students (Muncie Star, 1997) illustrates this problem.

Another significant impact on the effectiveness of the substitute teacher, as compared to the regular classroom teacher, is the usual brevity of the substitute assignment. Temporary employment of one or two days prevents the substitute teacher from getting to know each student's learning needs and strengths. This lack of knowledge prevents the substitute teacher from meeting learning objectives that may help the individual student's achievement. Learning theorists such as Piaget suggest that external organization of the learning environment is critical for student achievement (Wadsworth, 1971) To the extent that this organization is disrupted by a teacher's absence, educational achievement is attenuated.

Much of the work frequently left for substitute teacher is "busy" work. The lesson plans often require only the completion of duplicated work sheets. Such work sheets may have little, if any, value to the child's educational development. The class, sensing this lack of educational challenge through the mundane class work left for the substitute teacher to fulfill, reverts to entertaining each other. This may lead to the eventual breakdown of the academic structure.

A study by Manlove and Elliott (1977) found that the overall performance of a school was negatively affected by high teacher absenteeism. In their study, the rating of a school, on a number of both academic and administrative dimensions, declined with increased teacher absenteeism.

The role of the substitute teacher is challenging. Criticism of substitute teachers per se should not be inferred from data reported in this study. One needs to see the substitute teacher functioning in an arena quite different from the 'regular' classroom teacher. The substitute teacher is left to interpret lesson plans and implement the use of materials outlined by the absent teacher. When questions arise concerning the plans and materials left by the absent teacher, the substitute teacher must make decisions on his/her own. These situational factors probably have the greatest impact on substitute effectiveness.

A report by the Pennsylvania School Board Association (1978) stated, "Studies indicate substitute teachers are not as effective in the classroom as regular teachers because of the lack of continuity in the educational program."

Unfortunately, a lack of adequate research exists on the impact of teacher absence on student performance. Literature reviews on teacher absence reveal that research typically focuses on the cost of teacher absenteeism and strategies to entice teachers to reduce absenteeism. Few reviews, however, actually document the academic impact of absences on student achievement. A study by Ehrenberg, et al. (1991) was one of the few studies that attempted to relate teacher absenteeism to student achievement. Unfortunately, due to data collection problems in measuring student achievement, they were not able to adequately test the relationship across a full range of student performance. Thus, Ehrenberg's results are inconclusive on this issue.

Purpose Of Study

The specific purpose of this study was to address the void in empirical research on theoeeffect of teacher absenteeism on achievement. Specifically, this study looked at the impact of teacher absence from class on changes in student reading achievement. No research has been found which directly examines this question. This problem is significant because a large amount of student-teacher contact time is lost annually due to teacher absenteeism.

Methodology

Selection of the Population

The sample for the study consisted of third grade students and teachers in the Elkhart, Indiana Community School Corporation and the Campbell School District, Gillette, Wyoming. The study sample consisted of 817 third grade students and 45 teachers in the two school corporations. Students in the Elkhart Community School Corporation numbered 685 with 34 teachers. The Campbell School District had 132 students and 11 teachers. Only those students in the third grade who continued on to the fourth grade were included in the analyses. The initial sample represented 100% of third graders in the Elkhart school corporation and 25% of the third graders from Gillette, Wyoming. The final sample was as follows:

Teachers Students

Campbell School District 11 132 Elkhart Community School Corp 34 685

The Elkhart Community Schools, located in Northern Indiana, has a student enrollment of 13,000 students in two high schools, three middle schools, and 14 elementary schools. Six-hundred forty three teachers and 68 administrators are employed in the school system.

Campbell School District is located on the southeastern edge of Wyoming. Gillette is the primary city in the school district with a population of 35,000. The school district has 7,000 students in two high schools, three junior high schools, four rural schools (grades K-8), and ten elementary schools.

Measures

The data collected were based on the reading test scores of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The test was administered in the fall of the third grade and in the fall of the next year to those same students moving up to the fourth grade. The scores from the two grade levels were compared to compute changes in both grade equivalency and percentile rank changes.

Grade equivalency scores were obtained in the normal way for the ITBS by computing the mean raw score obtained by children in each grade. The average number of questions answered correctly in a standardized sample of a fourth grade reading test was 25. This corresponds to a grade equivalency of 4.0. Interpolation was used to determine fractions of a grade. The school year covered 10 months, with each month representing one-tenth. A score of 4.0 represented fourth grade (4) in September (.0). A score of 4.5 represented fourth grade in the month of February.

Percentile scores indicated a student's relative position in a standardized sample. Percentile could also be regarded as a position or rank in a group of 100. The fiftieth percentile corresponded to the median, i.e. 50% of the scores were higher and 50% were lower.

Teacher attendance was based on individual yearly absence rates. For the purposes of this study, the reason for a teacher's absence from his/her teaching duty was not determined. Therefore, an absence counted as an absence regardless of the reason. Certainly there are legitimate reasons for a teacher absence, however, the reason for an absence would not mitigate its effect.

In addition to the test scores, principals were asked to evaluate teachers included in this study. The purpose of this evaluation was to determine if supervisory evaluations were as effective at predicting changes in test scores as teacher absences.

Supervising principals were asked to evaluate each third grade teacher as excellent, average, or below average in teaching skills. Each principal received an evaluation form to use in rating the effectiveness of each third grade teacher. This form was mailed by the authors of this study. School principals were assured their responses were confidential and would be used for research purposes only. Teacher evaluation was thus based upon each principal's professional opinion of the teacher's performance.

Iowa Test of Basic Skills

The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (I.T.B.S.) is a nationally recognized test used to measure student achievement in grades K-9. Larry A. Harris, professor of education, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, stated that I.T.B.S. is used to provide status on pupil development in basic skills areas. He feels the norms are truly representative of the general population. (Riverside, 1995)

This test has long history and has been commended for its effectiveness for some time. For example, Fred Pryczak, Associate Professor of Education at California State University, Los Angeles, stated that the I.T.B.S. authors were successful in developing an achievement test which covered general intellectual skills and abilities of students. (Buros, 1978)

Results

As indicated earlier, the purpose of the study was to determine the impact of teacher absences on student achievement. Specifically, changes in reading scores for students moving from third to fourth grade were examined to determine if there was a relationship between these changes and teacher absence behavior.

Analysis of Variance was used to evaluate the effect of teacher absences, as well as the effect of principals' ratings on grade equivalency gain as measured by the I.T.B.S. Table 1 shows the absence behavior broken down into three categories. It also shows the number of teachers in each absence category, and the percentage of teachers in each category from each school district. As can be seen from this table, the majority of teachers studied had four or fewer absences.

Table 2 shows the Indiana and

The data on principal ratings of teacher behavior is also presented in Table 4. It appears that principals' ratings of teachers are not predictive of changes in student grade equivalency. It can also be noted that there was no interaction between teacher absences and principles' ratings on grade equivalency changes.

In addition to grade equivalency change, the students' percentile rank change (on a national basis) was analyzed. Table 5 shows the Indiana and Wyoming students' average third and fourth grade percentile scores. The score changes between the third and fourth grade are also shown. The Elkhart Community Schools' third graders had an average percentile score of 49.34 on the pre-test. The post-test score of 49.68 showed a growth of .31 percentile points for the school year.

The Campbell School District (Wyoming) third graders had an average pre-test percentile score of 63.56. The posttest score 57.90 showed a decline of 5.65 percentile points for the school year. The main concern here, of course, is changes relative to teacher absences and not relative to national averages.

Table 6 shows the percentile changes in student scores by teacher absence category. As with the grade equivalency scores, the teacher groups with four or fewer days absent had the best results in this area. The low absence groups had a positive gain in percentile ranking, while students of high absence teachers had negative changes in percentile rankings.

Table 7 shows the ANOVA test of the impact of absences and its effect on the I.T.B.S. percentile change. As can be seen in Table 7, the percentile changes in shown in Table 6 were statistically significant. Also included in this table are the principal ratings of teachers. Those teaches with higher ratings from their principles had higher percentile increase for their students. In this case, both teacher absences (p

Summary and Conclusions

This study supports the position that teacher absenteeism has a negative effect on student achievement. While this conclusion may seem logical, there has been a lack of research to support this conclusion.

There are several important implications from this study. Most importantly, this study determined that teachers are important. When a qualified educator is absent from the classroom, student achievement is negatively affected. Teachers are the educational leaders in the classroom and their roles cannot be compromised.

Administrators look at educational costs in terms of dollars expended. A cost that has escaped the business offices' eye is that of student achievement. As opportunities for teacher absences are offered in pay increases, student achievement is negatively influenced. Teachers and administrators need to consider the students' academic growth as the bargaining table scenario is carried out.

There are several recommended actions that occur from this study. First, further study which matches teachers with pupils, tracks achievement, and measures teacher attendance over time would be invaluable. Studies of this type would be more effective in pinpointing the relationship between students achievement and teacher attendance.

Next, school corporations need to look at practices that encourage teachers to be absent from the classroom. Conferences and in-service programs need to take place outside of the students' day. The financial expense of substitute teachers could be curtailed and the savings used to reward teachers for professional growth activities after student hours. Through a collaborative effort, professional educators, administrators, and teachers need to develop programs that will help keep the teacher in the classroom during student attendance hours.

Topics that may result in better teacher attendance and thoroughly improved student achievement are:

1. Buy back unused absence days.

2. Substitute teacher salary deduction for teacher use of illness days.

3. Rewards for teachers that are absent from the classroom less than four (4) times during a school calendar year.

4. Developing a commitment with teachers and administrators to the importance of teacher attendance in the classroom. Obviously, these suggestions are counter to the trends in teacher attendance. However, as the data from this study suggest; teacher attendance is not just a financial issue. Administrators and teachers alike must work together to make educational institutions attractive for students and teachers in order to maximize student achievement.

Newseum Opens New Education Center

To Enhance Students' Understanding of the News (701)-284-3713 Arlington, Virginia-All the news that's fit to learn will be available to students who visit the new Education Center at the Newseum in Arlington, Va.

The Newseum, the only interactive museum of news, is expanding its educational programs with a new Education Center, located adjacent to the Newseum at the Kent Street entrance to Freedom Park. The $1 million, 5,000-square-foot classroom facility is the centerpiece of a variety of new educational programs offered by the Newseum to enhance the experiences of students visiting the Newseum. There is no charge for programs in the Education Center, and admission to the Newseum is free.

Joe Urschel, Newseum executive director, said, "Our new educational programs for students provide fun and exciting ways for the next generation of journalists and news consumers to understand the importance of a free press in a free society."

During one-hour sessions in the Education Center, middle and high-school students will explore news issues and journalistic practices in depth. Visiting journalists, local teachers and Newseum staff will conduct programs on topics such as free speech and press ethics, reporting skills, photo editing, sports coverage, music censorship, plagiarism and free speech. Other classes will learn about journalism through"NewsMania," a team game based on news and current events. Four programs will be offered daily from Wednesday through Friday in the center's classroom, which accommodates up to 40 students.

Diana Husuly-Ackman, social studies supervisor for Arlington County Public Schools, called the Education Center "our backyard treasure." At the center's dedication, she said, "The educational impact of having this Newseum in our backyard is immense."

The Newseum recruited a teacher advisory panel to assist with the development of the Education Center and its programs. The advisory panel, which has worked together since January 1997, includes teachers from all nine school districts in the Washington metropolitan area.

References

Bracey, Gerald. (1992) The "Education Crisis": More rhetoric than reality. Education Digest. Feb., pp 39.

Bracey, Gerald. (1995) The Fifth Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Phi Delta Kappan, Oct., 77, 2, pp 149-161. Buros, O.K. (1978) The Eight Mental Measurement Yearbook, The Gryphon Press: Highland, New Jersey.

Ehrenberg, Eric L.; Ehrenberg, Randy A.; Ehrenberg, Ronald G.; and Rees, Daniel I. (1991) School District Leave Policies, Teacher Absenteeism, and Student Achievement. Journal of Human Resources, Winter, 26,172 (34). Elliott, Peggy G. (1979) Where Are the Students and Teachers? Viewpoints in Teaching and Learning, Spring, 55, pp. 18-29.

Lewis, James L. (1981) Do You Encourage Teacher Absenteeism? American School Board Journal, Nov., pp 29.

Madden, H. D. (1991) TeacherAbsences:Are there implications for educational restructuring? Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the MidSouth Educational Research Association, Lexington, KY, Nov. 13-15,1991. Manlove, Donald C. and Elliot, Peggy G. (1977) The Cost of Skyrocketing Teacher Absenteeism. Phi Delta Kappan, 54, 4, pp 269-271 Manlove, Donald C. and Elliott, Peggy G. (1979) Absent Teachers..Another Handicap for Students? The Practitioner, V, 4, pp 13.

Muncie Star (1997) Substitute Admits Smoking Pot, Sunday, March 2, pp 1.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983)A Nation at Risk. Government Printing Office.

New York State Office of Education Performance Review, Teacher Absenteeism in New York City and the Cost Effectiveness of Substitute Teachers. ERIC Document Reproduction Service. Ed 085868, January 1974, p. 17, Alexandria, VA.

Olson, M. N. (1971) Identifying Quality in School Classrooms: Some Problems and Some Answers. Special Report to the Metropolitan School Study Council.

Pennsylvania School Board Association Inc., Teacher Absenteeism: Professional Staff Absence Study. ERIC Documentation Service, Ed. 166816, Oct. 1978, pp. 15-33. Ravitch, Diane (1985-86) The Education Pendu

lum, Education, pp. 22.

Riverside Publishing Company. (1995) Iowa Test of Basic Skills. University of Iowa. Wadsworth, Barry, J. (1971) Piaget's theory of cognitive development. David McKay Company Inc.

Woods, R. C. (1996) Personal Communication with School Administrators.

ROBERT C. WOODS Elkhart Community Schools RAY V. MONTAGNO

Chairperson, Department of Management, Muncie, Indiana 47306 Ball State University

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