Socioeconomic Differences in the Long-Term Effects of Teacher Absence on Student Outcomes

While the scarce evidence on teacher absence identifies effects on student short-term test scores, this article studies potential effects on long-term educational attainment. We use population-wide Norwegian register data to study the effects of certified teacher absence during lower secondary school (grades 8-10) on non-completion of upper secondary education by age 21 as well as academic achievement in 10th grade. In a school fixed effects model, we find that an increase in teacher absence of 5 percentage points reduces students' examination grades by 2.3% of a standard deviation and increases the risk of dropout by 0.6 percentage points. While exposure to teacher absence is unrelated to family background, particularly large effects for low SES students drive the overall impact of teacher absence. Teacher absence does not affect the dropout of high SES students. The long-term effects on dropout are partly mediated by relatively large effects of teacher absence on the short-term academic achievements of low SES students at the bottom of the grade distribution. Overall, our findings indicate that reductions in instructional quality increase social inequality in long-term educational outcomes.