América del Norte/Estados Unidos/Octubre de 2016/Fuente: Mail on Line
RESUMEN: Distritos escolares públicos en los Estados Unidos están luchando para hacer frente a lo que el gobierno federal dice que es un problema crónico de ausencias de los maestros. La Oficina del Departamento de Educación para los Derechos Civiles ha acumulado datos que se dice indica que más de uno de cada cuatro profesores pierde más de 18 días de clases regulares. La información, que se aplica a 2014 ya que fue la última que proporcionaron las cifras, fue obtenida a partir de datos que fue reportado por los distritos escolares propios, de acuerdo con The Washington Post. Esto representa un fuerte aumento a partir del año académico anterior. De acuerdo con el Consejo Nacional para la Calidad de los Maestros, el 16 por ciento de los profesores fueron clasificados como «crónicamente ausentes ‘- aquellos que se perdieron 18 días o más – en el año escolar 2012-2013. El gobierno se enteró de que el problema era más grave en las zonas rurales más pobres del país, así como en una serie de grandes ciudades, donde hasta el 75 por ciento de los maestros estaba ‘crónicamente ausentes’.
Public school districts in the United States are struggling to cope with what the federal government says is a chronic problem of teacher absences.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has accumulated data that it says indicates that more than one in four teachers miss over 18 days of regular classes.
The information, which applies to 2014 since it was the latest that the figures were provided, was gleaned from data that was reported by the school districts themselves, according to The Washington Post.
That represents a steep increase from the previous academic year.
According to the National Council on Teacher Quality, 16 per cent of teachers were classified as ‘chronically absent’ – those who missed 18 days or more – in the 2012-2013 school year.
The government learned that the problem was more acute in poorer, rural areas of the country as well as in a number of major cities, where as many as 75 per cent of teachers were ‘chronically absent’.
One rural area that was hard hit by teachers missing work days was North Carolina’s Alamance-Burlington School District.
In the 2013-2014 school year, this district, which is located between Greensboro and Chapel Hill, saw an astounding 80 per cent of its 1,500 teachers miss more than 10 days.
In Cleveland, Ohio, 84 per cent of the teachers there were chronically absent.
Clark County School District in Nevada reported that over half of its 17,000 teachers missed over 10 days.
Education experts and observers say that just as student absences adversely impact academic performance and graduation rates, teacher absences have the same effect.
Analysts say that apart from personal absences such as sick days and maternity leave, teachers are feeling less motivated to come to work due to the climate and work environment that they encounter at the schools.
One former teacher at a Washington, D.C., area middle school told the Post that he was mostly healthy on the days that he did not report to work.
‘I would wake up in a panic and feeling like there was a pit in my stomach,’ Sean McGrath, a former social studies teacher at the Stuart Hobson Middle School, said.
‘It was a feeling of dread and despair.’
McGrath said that the feeling was mostly fueled by a combination of the rampant misbehavior by the students as well as what he and other teachers perceived as a lack of support from the principal and administrators.
Nonetheless, teacher representatives say the data paints a misleading picture.
Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, a nationwide union representing teachers, said that the root cause of the problem is the work conditions with which teachers have to cope.
She also says that because most teachers are women, they are forced to be at home since they are the primary caregivers in their families.
‘The data also doesn’t address some other basic conditions faced by teachers — the stress, the need to work beyond the school day and the juggling of work and home that interferes more with their family life than most professions,’ Weingarten said. ‘To better address absenteeism, we need to understand root causes.’
The figures were compiled for the 2013-2014 Civil Rights Data Collection, a survey of public schools and school districts in the US.
The study seeks to highlight issues impacting the quality of education provided in public schools as well as factors that contribute to it.
The survey also found that black preschool children were 3.6 times more likely to be suspended at least once than their white counterparts.
Among pupils enrolled in public kindergarten through 12th grade, black children were disproportionately more likely to be suspended than white pupils.
Of the 2.8 million K-12 students who were given out-of-school suspensions for disciplinary problems, 1.1 million were black; 600,000 were Latino; 660,000 were those classified as having disabilities; and 210,000 were foreigners.
Fuente: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3876696/Over-1-4-teachers-chronically-absent-school-government-study-finds-poor-work-conditions-rowdy-student-behavior-sapping-teacher-motivation.html
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