The U.S. Department of Education recently published a substantial amount of data related to civil rights issues. While perusing it, I came across a new data field, the percentage of teachers with absences greater than 10 days in a school year.
Teacher absences merit attention. Ask any child what typically happens when they have a substitute teacher and you’ll frequently hear that a video is shown or students are permitted to read. This is not ideal. In a recent conversation with a building principal who was recounting a Breakfast Club type Saturday detention session, I was told a frequent reason for these detentions is poor student behavior for a substitute teacher.
Teachers are human. They will get sick. But the frequency of absences beyond 10 days in a year is, frankly, astonishing. I plucked data from the following Michigan public school districts to get a sampling.
| % of Teacher FTE's w/10+ Absences | Total Teacher FTE's | # of Teachers w/10+ absences | Minimum # of days absent | Minimum substitute teacher costs ($100/day) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANN ARBOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS | 33.2% | 882 | 293 | 2,928 | $292,824 |
| BIRMINGHAM CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT | 55.3% | 354 | 196 | 1,958 | $195,762 |
| BLOOMFIELD HILLS SCHOOL DISTRICT | 63.9% | 392 | 250 | 2,505 | $250,488 |
| CHIPPEWA VALLEY SCHOOLS | 75.2% | 714 | 537 | 5,369 | $536,928 |
| DETROIT CITY SCHOOLS | 35.3% | 5,076 | 1,792 | 17,918 | $1,791,828 |
| FARMINGTON PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT | 58.4% | 712 | 416 | 4,158 | $415,808 |
| FOREST HILLS PUBLIC SCHOOLS | 26.5% | 581 | 154 | 1,540 | $153,965 |
| GROSSE ILE TOWNSHIP SCHOOLS | 61.2% | 113 | 69 | 692 | $69,156 |
| GROSSE POINTE PUBLIC SCHOOLS | 51.5% | 511 | 263 | 2,632 | $263,165 |
| MIDLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS | 48.2% | 474 | 228 | 2,285 | $228,468 |
| NORTHVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS | 39.3% | 349 | 137 | 1,372 | $137,157 |
| ROCHESTER COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT | 5.9% | 849 | 50 | 501 | $50,091 |
| TROY PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT | 84.7% | 739 | 626 | 6,259 | $625,933 |
| UTICA COMMUNITY SCHOOLS | 46.0% | 1,128 | 519 | 5,189 | $518,880 |
| WEST BLOOMFIELD SCHOOL DISTRICT | 35.0% | 380 | 133 | 1,330 | $133,000 |
| TOTALS | 42.7% | 13,254 | 5,663 | 56,635 | $5,663,453 |
| Source: US Dept. of Education |
These 15 districts represent about 19% of all teachers in the state. If that same 42.7% held true across the rest, the minimum cost in substitute teachers costs just for this sampling would be nearly $30 million annually. Recall that this only accounts for the teachers with 10 plus absences. How many more have several per year?
It’s quite possible that what is tracked as an absence may be professional development or committee work, but still this has me scratching my head. It’s just one of those issues where I have to believe there’s either a better way or we need real cultural change given the scarcity of resources.
This is another example of the need for us to collect and analyze more data, what I’ve referred to as my Moneyball theme. We should be correlating something like teacher absences with various student achievement data to determine the cost and benefit of such things as in school professional development.
For my Grosse Pointe readers, here is a breakdown of the same data by school building, again for the 2009 school year.
| Classroom Teachers | Teachers w/10+ absences | % w/10+ Absences | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BARNES EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTER | 6.0 | 4.0 | 66.7% |
| BROWNELL MIDDLE SCHOOL | 36.5 | 15.2 | 41.6% |
| CHARLES A. POUPARD ELEM. SCHOOL | 24.5 | 8.6 | 35.1% |
| FERRY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 26.6 | 14.6 | 54.9% |
| GEORGE DEFER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 27.0 | 16.8 | 62.4% |
| GROSSE POINTE NORTH HIGH SCHOOL | 83.7 | 34.0 | 40.6% |
| GROSSE POINTE SOUTH HIGH SCHOOL | 93.1 | 46.2 | 49.6% |
| JOHN MONTEITH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 31.3 | 19.5 | 62.4% |
| KERBY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 21.4 | 9.0 | 42.0% |
| LEWIS MAIRE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 21.2 | 8.5 | 39.9% |
| PARCELLS MIDDLE SCHOOL | 40.7 | 26.8 | 65.8% |
| PIERCE MIDDLE SCHOOL | 34.5 | 25.4 | 73.6% |
| RICHARD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 23.4 | 7.4 | 31.4% |
| ROBERT TROMBLY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 19.2 | 13.3 | 69.6% |
| STEVENS T. MASON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 22.4 | 14.0 | 62.4% |
| Grand Total | 511.4 | 263.2 | 51.5% |
| Source: US Department of Education |










