The Impact of Teacher Absenteeism on Student Achievement: A Study on U.S. Public Schools, Using Results of the 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection

Abstract

The present work intends to deepen our understanding of teacher absenteeism and student achievement. The hypothesis is that teacher absenteeism is a strong predictor of student test scores, and that teacher absenteeism has a direct negative impact on student learning. In this case, I run a regression with teacher absenteeism and the amount of students that don’t pass AP exams in each school. Results of this thesis show that the effect of teacher absenteeism is positive (meaning it leads to fewer students passing the AP exams), but that the magnitude decreases when additional control variables are added to the model.