Taking Attendance: Teacher Absenteeism across School Types

Employee absenteeism has long been studied in the areas of industrial organization and human resource management, but only recently have researchers in education policy paid attention to teacher absenteeism because of its effects on student achievement. Even then, no study has focused on comparing teacher-absence rates across school types. This study fills this gap in the literature by using a national data set of U.S. schools to compare teacher-absence rates between traditional public schools, magnet schools, charter schools, and various types of private schools including Catholic schools, other (non-Catholic) religious private schools, and non-religious private schools. Results show that relative to traditional public schools, charter schools and private schools, particularly Catholic schools, have lower rates of teacher absence. Although this study is descriptive, not causal, the results are consistent with the theory that organizational-level factors such as cultural salience — the extent to which members of a school community agree with and are influenced by the norms and values espoused by the collective school community — are important determinants of individual-level teacher absenteeism. Additional analysis, however, is required to better understand the causes of the differences in rates of teacher absenteeism across different school types.