Class Divide? More Teacher Absences in Poorer Districts

Barbara Martinez:

New York City teachers get 10 sick days during their 184-day school year, and most stick to that number. But 20% of teachers take more than that amount -- and a small percentage take 30 or more days off, according to Department of Education figures.

The data show that for some of the poorest districts, like the South Bronx and Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood, more than 20% of the teachers are out two weeks or more during the school year. The teachers union cautions that the absence data includes all types of absences, including things like professional development and jury duty over which teachers have no control. And not all poor districts have high-absentee teachers.

Still, in districts like the one that contains the Upper East Side, the percentage of teachers absent two weeks or more is below the average.

Ron Isaac:

The Wall Street Journal, attack dog for the righteous marketplace, apostle of "bang for the buck" for civil servants, and conscience of the all-day businessman's lunch for dividends gluttons, decried in an April 28 piece the alleged statistic that public school teachers tend to exhaust their annual ten-day "sick bank," especially in poorer areas of the city.
They suspect that teachers' claim of sickness is often a ploy and mask for their contemptuous attitude towards professional duty. They see teachers who get sick as slackers who if they cared about kids would have immune systems better able to repel microbes. They plainly feel that unions are the enablers of teachers' audacity.
Perhaps it's true about teachers burning through their ten days over ten months. But a fragment of truth without context is no truth at all, but as an instrument to exploit the public's gullibility, it's more serviceable than an out and out lie.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 4, 2010 3:02 AM
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