Funny thing about being a teacher, you tend to get sick more than the average bear, especially if you teach the 12 and under set. (Since my son started day care, he has certainly been sick more often, as has the whole family.) And, since most elementary school teachers are women, they tend to be the ones who have to take time off of work when their own kids are sick.  Oh, and there is that biological inconvenience known as being pregnant--lots of doctor's appointment for that one!*

So, what to make of Marguerite Roza's assertion that teachers take too many sick days?  I would conclude that she never taught elementary school.

What's that you say--Roza has more substantative things to say in her new Ed Sector report that demand a response? 

Let's get serious--this report is just another in a series of attacks on seniority and the salary schedule by Ed Sector and the Center on Reinventing Public Education. The rest is just window dressing. So, I pose the same question to Marguerite Roza (or anyone at Ed Sector who wants to take it up) that I posed to Terry Moe five years ago when he was on a Hoover Institution panel on teacher pay: If private schools can pay teachers any way that they want, why do two-thirds of them use a salary schedule that includes years of experience as the basis of pay? Moe did not have an answer, by the way.

AFT's offical press release here.