Leave

Apart from the winter break, spring break and summer vacation, districts provide teachers with sick and personal leave days. In some districts, teachers accumulate sick leave as they progress through the school year, with each month of work equating with one day of leave. Other districts grant a lump sum of leave at the beginning of each school year. While districts generally control leave policies, 34 states and the District of Columbia have policies regarding sick and personal days.

Teachers are generally granted between 10 and 15 days of sick leave per year. In addition to sick leave, districts designate a number of days that may be used for personal reasons other than illness. Personal leave can be used to run errands, attend a child's graduation ceremony, or virtually any reason that the teacher chooses. Many districts have policies that allow teachers to accumulate unused leave days. In some cases teachers may exchange some or all of the unused days for pay at the end of each school year or at retirement.

The most common types of additional paid leave days include professional development, bereavement, jury duty, military service and work-related legal proceedings or injuries. Adoption, child-birth, paternity and child-rearing leaves are usually unpaid, a time when teachers rely on accumulated leave days for pay.

Some districts have put in place policies to help reduce excessive absences such as prohibiting use of personal days before or after a holiday, requiring medical documentation for multiple consecutive sick days, and requiring teachers to contact the principal when using leave rather than an automated system. For a more in depth look at teacher leave policies and attendance rates, read our 2014 report Roll Call: The importance of teacher attendance.

Teacher Contract Database The database includes information on sick and personal leave (including if these days can be carried over and the maximum number that can be accumulated), professional development leave, other leave, and attendance incentive policies (including payment for unused leave).

See our most recent Teacher Trendline on leave policies for a detailed description of policies in our database.

What the research shows

Frequent teacher absences negatively impact student performance. Researchers have found that every 10 absences lowers mathematics achievement by 1.7 to 3.3 percent of a standard deviation, which is roughly equivalent to the difference in mathematics achievement seen between students of teachers with one to two years of experience and students of teachers with three to five years of experience (Clotfelter, et al., 2007; Miller et al., 2008; Miller 2008).

Teacher absence patterns often reflect those of their colleagues, creating a culture of acceptable rates of absenteeism within each school. One study found that teachers increase their rates of absenteeism when moving from a school with a low absence rate to a school with a higher absence rate (Bradley et al., 2007). School demographics also play a role in teacher absences. A disproportionate number of teacher absences occur in schools serving predominately low-income families, negatively impacting those students who already face significant hurdles to achievement (Clotfelter, et al., 2007; Miller 2008).

Works Cited

Bradley, Steve, Colin Green, and Gareth Leeves. "Worker absence and shirking: Evidence from matched teacher-school data." Labour Economics 14.3 (2007): 319-334. (working paper version)

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. Are Teacher Absences worth Worrying about in the US?. No. w13648. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007.

Miller, Raegan. "Tales of teacher absence: New research yields patterns that speak to policy makers." Center for American Progress (2008).

Miller, Raegen T., Richard J. Murnane, and John B. Willett. "Do teacher absences impact student achievement? Longitudinal evidence from one urban school district." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 30.2 (2008): 181-200. (NBER working paper version)