Teacher Absenteeism under Different District Policies in New Mexico

摘要

The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to examine to what extent the type of leave policy (restrictive vs. lenient vs. very lenient) in three New Mexico school districts affected teachers' number of unused paid leave days and to what extent the change in teacher attendance policy (from not including teacher absenteeism in teacher evaluation to including it) put in place by the New Mexico Public Education Department in 2014-2015 affected teachers' number of unused paid leave days. This study was conducted on secondary data with a sample size of 1,924 teachers. Gronau's leisure-work theory and Hill and Trist's absence culture formed the theoretical framework for this study. The statistical analysis involved one-way ANOVA for the first research question and paired-sample t-test for the second question. The ANOVA results revealed statistically significant differences between in teachers' number of unused paid leave days in 2013-2014, attributable to different district policies of paid leave (F(2, 1921) = 244.33, p < .01). Teachers who worked in a district that offered only sick leave took 2.55 fewer days of annual paid leave than teachers who worked in a district that offered personal leave and 4.6 fewer days of leave than teachers who work in a district that offered paid leave. The paired-samples t-test results did not reveal a significant difference in teacher unused paid leave days attributable to the change in state policy for teacher evaluations from 2013-2014 (n = 899, M = 4.6, SD = 3.9) to 2014-2015, when absenteeism was added to teacher evaluation (n = 899, M = 4.4, SD = 4.1). These findings may assist school districts, state education departments, and the United States Department of Education in selecting policies that reduce teacher absences.