This article exploits highly detailed data on teacher absences from a large urban school district in the northern United States to shed light on the determinants and effects of teacher absences. The topic is important because both school and district policies can influence teachers' propensity to be absent. The authors estimate the impact of teacher absences on academic achievement of students matched to elementary school teachers. Models include fixed effects for teachers to control statistically for potential correlation between time-invariant levels of teachers' skill and effort and their rates of absence. The authors estimate 10 additional days of teacher absence reduce mathematics achievement of fourth-grade students by 3.2% of a standard deviation. They employ an additional instrumental variables strategy to bolster the case for a causal interpretation of results. Instrumentalvariables results indicate the impact of unexpected teacher absences on student achievement is larger than the impact of anticipated absences.

Rates of employee absences and the effects of absences on productivity are topics of conversation in many organizations in many countries. One reason is that high rates of employee absence may signal weak management and poor labor-management relations. A second reason is that reducing rates of employee absence may be an effective way to improve productivity. This paper reports the results of a study of employee absences in education, a large, labor-intensive industry. Policymakers' concern with teacher absence rests on three premises: (1) that a significant portion of teachers' absences is discretionary, (2) that teachers' absences have a nontrivial impact on productivity, and (3) that feasible policy changes could reduce rates of absence among teachers. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the first two of these premises; it discusses the third premise. We employ a methodology that accounts for time-invariant differences among teachers in skill and motivation. We find large variation in adjusted teacher absence rates among schools. We estimate that each 10 days of teacher absences reduce students' mathematics achievement by 3.3 percent of a standard deviation.

This article studies the impact of teacher absences on education. Using data spanning three academic years about 285 teachers and 8,631 predominantly economically disadvantaged students from a United States urban school district, it tests assumptions that a substantial portion of teachers' absences is discretionary and that these absences reduce productivity -students' mathematics scores. Since absent teachers are typically replaced by less qualified substitutes, instructional intensity and consistency may decline: ten days of teacher absence reduce students' achievement score by about 3.3 per cent of a standard deviation -enough to lower some students' designation in the state proficiency system and, thus, their motivation to succeed.ates of absenteeism and the effects of employee absences on productivity * Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Resumen. Los autores estudian los efectos del ausentismo de los maestros en la instrucción, basándose en datos de tres cursos académicos que abarcan a 285 maestros y a 8.631 alumnos —la mayoría pertenecientes a familias modestas— de un distrito escolar urbano de los Estados Unidos. Comprueban la hipótesis de que las ausencias de los maestros son en gran parte injustificadas y reducen el aprovechamiento de los estudiantes. Dado que los suplentes suelen tener menos preparación, la enseñanza pierde intensidad y coherencia: diez días de ausencia del maestro se traducen en un descenso de las notas de los alumnos en matemáticas de alrededor del 3,3 por ciento de la desviación estándar. Para algunos estudiantes, ello supone bajar a una catego‐ría de nivel académico inferior, lo cual reduce su voluntad de salir adelante.

Surveying and evaluating the scientific literature gender disparities in mathematics, science, and engineering disciplines, Ceci and Williams argue that the underrepresentation of women in these fields is due to "certain choices that women (but not men) are compelled to make in our society."