Philly Newspaper Criticizes 1.5% Teacher Absence Rate

Apparently a 1.5% absence rate for teachers is too high.

The Daily News went with this same jive a few weeks ago by publishing a piece about 13 DOE employees who called in sick to take vacations and honeymoons.

Now, how many people are employed by the DOE?

Let's say it's a nice round number like 80,000.

It's higher than that , but for our purposes, 80,000 is good.

Now let's divide 13 by 80,000 and see what percentage of DOE employees calling in sick to honeymoon without approval there were...

My calculator comes up with 0.0001625%.

Gee, that's a pretty small percentage of lazy-ass, crooked teachers taking honeymoons in Bermuda when they're supposed to be teaching test prep.

One might say it's not a story at all.

Yet of course it became one of the "most read" education stories at the News.

Because teachers are, you know, lazy and crooked.

And 1.5% absence rate on the first two days of school in Philly proves we need more reforms to hold teachers accountable and fire them.

How dare 201 teachers out 11,000 call in sick on the second day of school?