Student Performance Impacted by Teacher Absences

According to a January 16, 2008 article from The Associated Press, students whose teachers are absent for several days during the school year tend not to perform as well academically as their peers. Because substitute teachers are often called upon to assist in several different subjects throughout the course of a school year, they may not be as prepared to teach specific lessons as the absent teacher would be. In addition, the number of schools across the nation that used substitutes as a means of filling the gap created by full-time teacher vacancies doubled between 1994 and 2004. Recent data indicates that, even if substitute teachers are utilized, student test scores drop when there this a high level of teacher absenteeism.

The article is available at the MSNBC Web site.