Do Teachers With Absent Students Feel Less Job Satisfaction?

Abstract

Research and policy have focused predominantly on the individual consequences for students who miss school. Yet absenteeism does not occur in a vacuum, and less work has focused on how student absenteeism correlates to classroom dynamics. Practically no attention has been paid toward teachers. We propose in this study that student absences make it challenging for teachers to enjoy the very function of their jobs and thus experience more dissatisfaction at work as a result. We find that teachers have lower job satisfaction when more of their students are absent. However, we find statistically significant differences only for broad aspects of teacher satisfaction—job enjoyment, usefulness, and belief in the profession—rather than differences among other related measures of teaching.