Date of Award

8-1980

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Educational Leadership

Abstract

The major purposes of this 3-year ex post facto case study were to ascertain if a relationship exists between the rate of teacher absenteeism and program curtailments, necessitated by financial problems resulting from declining enrollments, and the morale of teachers. Specifically, this study analyzed the absence pattern of those teachers affected by building closings, academic reassignment, and notification of layoff, over a 3-year period, to determine their relationship to absenteeism.

The study was conducted in the East Detroit Public Schools, East Detroit, Michigan. The 476 full-time professional teachers employed during the 3 years of the study comprised the total sample population. From this population, two subgroups were identified. All teachers who had been laid off, transferred as a result of a building closing, or reassigned outside their area of expertise that were employed during the 1979-1980 school year comprised one group. A randomly selected group of 100 was constructed to represent the unaffected population.

Absence records of all teachers were recorded and the difference in the mean rates of absenteeism for each of the 3 years of the study was analyzed to determine if a difference existed in the rates of absenteeism between the affected and unaffected groups.

The Purdue Teacher Opinionaire was also employed to measure morale and the perceived effectiveness of the school administration. The Purdue Teacher Opinionaire was administered to the affected population and the sample group of unaffected teachers.

Three hypotheses were generated which dealt with the program curtailments and the rate of absenteeism. Four additional hypotheses were generated to study the relationship of the rate of teacher absenteeism and teacher morale. Three of these four hypotheses were concerned with the teacher-administrator relationship and its impact on absenteeism.

The results of the analysis failed to reveal a difference in the rates of absenteeism among the identified groups for the hypotheses which were concerned with absenteeism and its relationship to program curtailments. Also, the four hypotheses concerned with morale and the rate of absenteeism were not supported by the analysis.

Although the hypotheses generated in this study failed to support the literature as reported in this study, it was determined that morale within the East Detroit Public Schools was very low throughout the teacher population. This low morale was suggested as the major reason why this study did not find results which were consistent with the literature.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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