Absenteeism in Decatur Public Schools
I. Absenteeism Statistics
I’ve got good news and bad news:
The Bad News: For the current school year (2021-2022), teachers (I’m only talking about teachers in this article – no other staff) in DPS61 have an absenteeism rate of 5.6%. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (USBLS) the absence rate for the entire US workforce in 2019 (pre-covid) was 2.8%. That’s half our teacher’s rate. Half! The USBLS obviously doesn’t have data yet for 2022 and comparing to the 2021 labor statistics doesn’t seem like it would fair, because people were getting covid during 2021, so the 2021 number is obviously higher – and, well, it is at 3.2%. But the interesting thing is, even though teachers in DPS61 were getting covid in the 2020-2021 school year, the absence rate in that year was only 2.9%. (These are the only three years of absentee data for DPS we have.)
Wait… what? OK, we get that if you can work from home every day, and you have the sniffles you can still teach a class on Zoom, but we’re talking about a nearly 100% increase in absences from one year to the next. This is what you would call a “natural experiment” and it seems to me the 2.9% may establish some semblance of what is possible if teachers only took time off if they are too sick to teach. (Not exactly, we understand the differences – but close.)
And to reiterate, the most important fact in the rate comparisons is that our 5.6% DPS61 teacher’s absenteeism rate is double the national workforce average of 2.8%. And we could have made the comparison appear even worse by comparing DPS61 teacher’s rate to the more appropriate 2019 USBLS “Management, professional, and related occupations” category of workers (those with college degrees – like teachers) rate of only 2.5%. Frontline Education offers the following graphic in their deep-dive to understand the issue.
Which Brings Us to the Good News: Once again, for the current school year (2021-2022), teachers in DPS61 have an absenteeism rate of 5.6%. But the national average absenteeism rate for all teachers in the United States in 2016 (the last data I could find) is 5.5%. Let’s gooooo! We’re not doing that bad, are we? (Yeah, maybe you should read the bad news again.)
II. Then do we really have a problem?
OK. If we’re not much different than the national average are things really that bad? Well, yes. The world, and I mean that literally – the world – is starting to talk about teacher absenteeism. And nationally, the conversation is amped up even more because of how far behind students are due to a missed year and a half of school. Herrmann and Rockoff in the Journal of Labor Economics make the following claim about substitute teachers’ effectiveness:
Our analysis indicates that worker absences have large negative impacts: the expected loss in daily productivity from employing a temporary substitute is on par with replacing a regular worker of average productivity with one at the 10th–20th percentile of productivity.
In other words, a substitute teacher will accomplish 10 to 20% of what the regular teacher would. Taking an informal poll of two principals and former teachers in the area, we found those numbers probably too high for upper-level grades, where they felt practically zero is accomplished on most sub days, and close to on target for elementary school. Obviously, we need teachers in the classroom. Every day.
Additionally, paying for over 5,000 substitute days (while we will have over 5,500 teacher absences this year, we don’t pay for subs for that many days because there simply aren’t that many subs to be found) at an average rate of $150 per day, costs the district over $750,000 per year. That’s a lot of money! Well, it seemed like a lot of money until you start talking about all the millions of dollars thrown around as part of the CARES act – but it will be a lot of money again soon!
So, we know teachers in the classroom matter (a lot) when it comes to student achievement, and paying substitute teachers is very, very expensive, but here’s the interesting thing, and the thing that might escape the casual observer of this problem: The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ) did a survey of 30 of the largest school districts in the nation and found a remarkable variance in the districts absenteeism rates, ranging from 3.5% in Washington DC to 8.8% in the Newark Public Schools.
HOLY CRAP. That’s a huge difference in both directions from Decatur Public Schools. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in sub pay, from one extreme to the other, and approximately ten missed learning days! We’re pretty much smack dab in the middle, so there must be something we can and should do to move in the correct direction, decrease the number of teacher absences, and make learning our number one priority.
III. What should inform our decision?
The National Council of Teacher Quality has a list of correlations between teachers' absences and selected teachers', schools’, and districts' characteristics. This is a good place to start to see if we can identify the reasons teachers might miss work in Decatur. (I encourage you to follow the link and read the full, unabridged list for yourself.) Here’s a summary of the most important correlations that effect Decatur Public Schools, which we grouped for conciseness:
In the “We all need a purpose in life” category:
Poverty - teachers in schools with the highest poverty levels were absent on average half a day less than teachers in schools with relatively lower poverty levels.
Students of color - the higher the district's percentage of students of color, the less time that their teachers are absent.
Experience - teachers with more years of experience tend to be absent a larger number of days. (This is in the “purpose” category because, perhaps, as teachers teach longer, they begin to feel their contribution is less important.)
In the “Give people something and they will take it” category:
Maximum Sick leave - The more sick-leave teachers have, the more total days of absence they have.
Total leave - the more total leave teachers have, the more time they're absent on average.
Maximum Personal leave - the more personal leave teachers have, the more time they are absent.
And in the “Still important, but I don’t know where to put it” category:
School Enrollment -Larger schools tend to have teachers that are absent less time. (We’re a little surprised about this one. Are you?)
District's base salary - the higher a teacher's estimated salary the lower their number of absences.
IV. So, what should we do?
Central Office:
The correlation showing lower absences from teachers who teach children “in need”, affirms that teachers who feel a sense of purpose in their jobs will show up more often. This shouldn’t surprise us and can’t be stressed enough. We’ve mentioned Daniel Pink’s book Drive before in our article on Teaching to the Test, and the importance of his three components of “what motivates us” are just as relevant here. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the keys to motivating workers around the world, and teachers are certainly no exception. Central Administration should foster this purpose – and reinforce it by putting teachers at the center of nearly every decision in the district. Let’s make DPS 61 a “Destination District” for teachers! Create an environment where teachers are given autonomy (provide them the ability to be creative and allow room to create lessons that work for their students), purpose, and an opportunity to master their craft through constant feedback and training.
Follow up on sick leave and track it at a microscopic level. If we could be so bold, take one of the public relations jobs and turn it into a worker-relations job. (Stay tuned for a future article on how we might reorg Central Administration.) The natural experiment of covid in the 2020-2021 school year which reveals and highlights the difference between our 2.9% absenteeism rate that year and our 5.8% rate this year should tell us that we can do better. We must start by tracking the absences and understanding why teachers are not coming to work.
Look at what other districts have done to reduce absenteeism. Create a plan. Put resources toward the plan and don’t be afraid to incentivize great attendance. Incentives appear to have somewhat diminishing effectiveness, but they are needed initially to provide information on what the real number of sick days could be.
Building Principals:
Follow up on absences! The NCTQ research shows that more than two thirds of the total absences in the districts studied come from only one third of the teachers. Look for trends in absences and follow up. Look for early warning signs that teachers may be losing their sense of purpose and don’t be afraid to step in and offer help. Every sick day should be taken seriously. Listen to the teachers and offer help when appropriate.
The Teachers Union:
The statistics locally and nationwide on how many families are leaving public schools and going to private and home schools is staggering. The union doesn’t need a lesson from us to understand this change and how the continuing decline in public education (again both locally and nationally) will continue to reduce the number of public-school union membership. But specifically, as the differences between public and private schools relate to this article, Albert Cheng from the University of Arkansas, in his 2013 study Taking Attendance: Teacher Absenteeism across School Types, found “private schools have teacher-absence rates that are about one percentage point lower than traditional public schools”. This number is significant and represents at least two workdays per year, and we suppose will be even greater today as the number of absences has escalated in the public-school realm over the last ten years. The Union must recognize that the correlation between maximum sick days allowed, and sick days taken must be addressed at their own peril.
Teachers:
Well, the buck stops here, doesn’t it? If you want to be valued, value yourself. You are important. Every day. We at DPS Chalkboard wish Decatur would be such a great place for teachers that they would leave other districts to come here to teach. And it may happen. We have a new Superintendent and things appear to be off to a great start. Everyone must be treated with respect and valued, and that means it starts with you valuing and helping yourselves and each other.
Are we on the right track? Comment below - even if you want to use a pseudonym - we’d love to hear from you!