Kirk, Cathy Lee.

This study was designed to examine absenteeism rates for elementary and middle school teachers for 1996-97 to determine if a relationship exists between absenteeism and student achievement, as measured by a standardized norm-referenced reading test. The study examined the attendance records of 727 fourth and 154 seventh grade teachers who taught a reading or language arts class and 18,802 students in grades four and seven. The variables of teacher years of experience, student grade level, and student gender were added to the multiple regression model in order to ascertain whether or not teacher absences made a significant contribution to the prediction of student reading scores beyond that afforded by the aforementioned variables. Results indicated that there was a weak, but statistically significant relationship between teacher absenteeism and student achievement when the unit of analysis was the student (N = 18802). In this model, teacher absenteeism accounted for less than.4% of the variation in student achievement. When the unit of analysis was the teacher, results indicated that teacher absences for both fourth grade (n = 727) and seventh grades (n = 154) did not make a significant contribution to the prediction of student reading scores.