Evan Scott is a lifelong New Jersey resident, a veteran, and a retired military service member. He holds a bachelor’s degree in education and was elected to his hometown’s Board of Education in 1988. Now living in Evesham Township, NJ, he continues to advocate for fair and transparent school funding.

New Jersey just created a “Chronic Absenteeism Task Force” to “assess chronic absenteeism in the State’s public schools,” compare pre- and post-pandemic trends, analyze root causes (including school climate and mental health), and recommend best practices. It’s required to deliver a final report within one year of organizing—and then it sunsets. 

But if we’re serious about “turning research into results,” we’re aiming at the wrong target.

Yes, student chronic absenteeism is a real crisis. Under New Jersey law, a student is “chronically absent” if they miss 10% or more of enrolled school days in a 180-day year. And the legislative statement cites NJ school performance reports showing chronic absenteeism rose to 16.6% in 2022–23, up from 10.6% in 2018–19. 

Here’s the part we’re not saying out loud: student attendance is shaped by adult behavior and adult systems. And one of the most obvious—yet least confronted—drivers is teacher attendance.

If teacher absence harms achievement, why wouldn’t it also shape student attendance?

The research on outcomes is clear: when teachers aren’t there, students lose ground. A well-known NBER study found that each 10 days of teacher absence reduced students’ math achievement by about 3.3% of a standard deviation (in one urban district). 

And while achievement is the headline, attendance is the engine. There’s strong evidence that teachers influence student attendance itself: a peer-reviewed paper using North Carolina longitudinal data finds teachers have “arguably causal, statistically significant effects on student absences” that persist over time. 

Even Brookings, writing about post-pandemic teacher absence, puts it plainly: prior research shows teacher attendance is associated with student learning and “may influence student attendance”—through disrupted instruction, weakened relationships, and reduced parent engagement. 

So the obvious question is: If New Jersey is building a whole apparatus to diagnose student absenteeism, why are we not treating teacher absenteeism as a leading indicator—and a direct lever?

The charter vs. district gap isn’t subtle. It’s cultural.

Federal civil rights data (2013–14) show 28.3% of teachers in traditional public schools were chronically absent (more than 10 sick/personal days), versus 10.3% in charters. In New Jersey, the same report lists district teachers as at least twice as likely to be chronically absent as charter teachers. 

The authors note the data are older and the findings are descriptive—not proof of causation. Still, the consistency and size of the gap are hard to ignore.

The report points to what policymakers often avoid: norms and expectations. It argues that school culture can curb—or enable—chronic teacher absence, and that many charters were built around a “go the extra mile” ethos with fewer excuses tolerated from adults or students. 

That doesn’t mean district teachers “don’t care,” or that charters are magically virtuous. It means incentives and accountability differ: district systems tend to be optimized for compliance and process; charters tend to be optimized for mission and results—often with closure as the backstop. 

The task force is built to study families. But the lever is adults.

Look at the task force membership structure: along with the Commissioner, it includes representatives recommended by major stakeholder organizations, including the NJEA and AFT-NJ, principals, administrators, school boards, and parent advocacy. That’s not inherently bad. But it signals the default approach: convene the system, study the system, write a report, and hope the system changes.

We don’t need another report to know this basic truth: children take cues from the adults around them. When school feels inconsistent—when instruction is regularly interrupted, when subs rotate, when relationships don’t stick—students disengage. And disengagement shows up as absences.

What New Jersey should do instead (starting this semester)

If the governor and legislature want “results,” here are three moves that don’t require a year-long task force:

1. Put teacher chronic absenteeism on the public dashboard—school by school.
   New Jersey already tracks student chronic absenteeism. Add teacher chronic absenteeism right next to it in school performance reporting. If we can measure it, we can manage it.
2. Treat extreme teacher absenteeism like an academic emergency—because it is.
   Set clear thresholds for intervention (not punishment): coaching for leadership, coverage planning, climate audits, and targeted support where chronic teacher absence clusters.
3. Fix incentives and norms, not just messaging.
   The report’s core insight is cultural: people respond to what their peers and leaders signal is acceptable. 

Districts can adopt practical tools—attendance pattern reviews, limits on discretionary leave around peak days, buy-back options for unused leave, and recognition for strong attendance—while protecting legitimate medical needs.

New Jersey’s student absenteeism problem is real. The state’s own legislative language says so. But if we keep treating absenteeism as something that only happens to schools (because of families, poverty, mental health, “post-COVID norms”), we’ll keep missing the factor schools actually control every day: Whether the adults show up.

If we want students back in their seats, the fastest path isn’t another task force. It’s a statewide expectation—transparent, measurable, and enforced with smart support—that schools must be places where teaching is reliably present.