PIER seminar: Susanna Loeb, Engaging Teachers: Measuring the Impact of Teachers on Student Attendance in Secondary School

Date: 

Tuesday, March 6, 2018, 4:15pm to 5:15pm

Location: 

HGSE Larsen Hall 106 (updated)

Susanna Loeb, Barnett Family Professor of Education and Faculty Director of CEPA Labs, Stanford University.

Partnering in Education Research (PIER) Seminar Series, Center for Education Policy Research, Harvard University. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy.

Susanna Loeb

Both anecdotal and systematic evidence points to the importance of teachers for students’ long run success. Previous research on effective teachers has focused almost exclusively on student test score gains in math and reading. For this study we are able to link middle and high school teachers to the class-attendance of students in their classrooms, and to create measures of teachers’ contributions to student attendance.

Student absence is a growing concern for policy makers. On average, secondary students in the United States are absent from school three weeks per year (Snyder & Dillow, 2013), and even when they are in school, they miss many classes. We find systematic variation in teacher effectiveness at reducing class absences. These differences across teachers are as stable as those for student achievement.

While positively correlated with teachers’ value-added to achievement, teachers’ value-added to attendance is clearly different and contributes independently and approximately equally to long run student outcomes including high school graduation.

Learn more about Susanna Loeb's work

Education policy expert to lead Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University

For seminar details and livestream
cepr.harvard.edu/pier-seminar

 

See also: Spring 2018