1 in 4 U.S. teachers are chronically absent

I'll type slower ...

You. Do. Not. Know. That.

 

The study in the article you posted makes no such distinctions, YF. If you only want to get rid of the teachers taking days off without good reason, that's fine, but you should have made that clear. Instead, you posted an article as if it was a smoking gun, with no commentary from you, without acknowledging that the study in that article does not distinguish among the reasons teachers are missing those days.

Of course, you could simply acknowledge that you posted an unclear article based on a flawed study and that you do not have a better one to support your claim at this moment.

 

Yes. I. Do. Read the article. It even acknowledges the flaws, such as errors in self-reported data.

 

I read the fucking article and I read the fucking DofEd study. One more critical detail: I'm actually about a zillion percent more qualified to evaluate social sciences research/research methods than you. And while it's possible measurement error materially affected the reported conclusions -- I strongly doubt it, but it is possible -- if I can't tell with any degree of certainty you sure as hell can't (and haven't).

 

To add to OOP's point, why fire them? They're allowed by their contract to miss that time.

Out of curiosity, I looked up my local school district's teacher contract. They get 5 personal days per year, which they notify their supervisor in advance to have off. In their first two years, they get 15 sick days, in which they call out in the morning or the night before, in then 10 sick days a year each additional year. They are allowed to accumulate up to 225 sick days in the first year of the contract, then a few sick days were added to each subsequent year of the contract. Any sick days that they didn't use by retirement, they get paid something like $30 per unused sick day.

So, if you get a teacher in my district who takes five of their 15 days/year each in the first two years, they get to carry over the remaining 20 days (10 days X 2 years) to their third year and, after getting 10 days for their third year, have 30 sick days for their third year.

They get this benefit not only as part of their compensation for having lower salaries, but also because if they get sick, their illness can spread to the kids and get them sick.

And, the teachers are more vulnerable to getting sick because you have parents who send their sick kids to school because they can't afford to take a day off from their own job to care for them because their employer doesn't offer sick days.

 

You could've just said that from the beginning and spared yourself a lot of pent-up angst by not doing your usual "you're wrong but I won't say why" shtick.

Just sayin'.

 

That would have put me on the wrong side of history.

ETA: Glad y'all took that for what it was ...

 

There were errors in the reporting of the self-reported data that the study was based upon. Even someone of my limited expertise took note of it. Perhaps you just missed it. Perhaps not.

 

This is spectacular. Right up there with the new coach wants to run off 14 guys in the name of a new culture.

You'd better hope there's a pool of recruits, so to speak, who can take their place.

Otherwise, you're just John Mackovic.

 

Mrs. Whitman shows up like clockwork.

 

Who cares. She'd better not have a bad month from hereon. If so - hit the road Mrs. Whitman!

 

If she dares miss 10 days some school year, YF wants to see her fired. He might give her a break if it is due to a serious illness of family situation. Maybe.