School District Leave Policies, Teacher Absenteeism, and Student Achievement / Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Randy A. Ehrenberg, Daniel I. Rees, Eric L. Ehrenberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ehrenberg, Ronald G.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ehrenberg, Randy A.

Rees, Daniel I.

Ehrenberg, Eric L.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w2874.

NBER working paper series no. w2874

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1989.

Summary:

In an effort to reduce salary costs, many school districts have begun to offer teachers financial incentives to retire early. Often, however, these districts have limits on the number of cumulated unused sick leave days that teachers may receive cash payments, credits toward future health insurance, or retirement credits for, at retirement. Thus, one might expect that in addition to stimulating early retirement, early retirement incentive programs may interact with sick leave provisions and provide an unintended incentive for increased teacher absenteeism. To the extent that less learning occurs when regular teachers are absent and student motivation to attend school is also reduced, student academic performance may suffer. This surely would be an unintended side effect of these policies. To address these issues, this paper, which is based on an extensive data collection effort by the authors, presents an econometric analyses of variations in teacher and student absenteeism across the over 700 school districts in New York State in 1986-87 and of how such variations influence student test score performance.

Notes:

Print version record

March 1989.