When teachers want to leave, students stop showing up
The question
When teachers at a school report low trust and morale, do their students attend school less?
Across New York City schools, teacher-voice survey scores (would-recommend, trust, school climate) move together with chronic-absenteeism rates. Schools in the weakest fifth of the teacher-voice ranking (about 60% positive responses) average 43% chronic absenteeism. Schools in the strongest fifth (about 97% positive) average 33%. The 10-percentage-point gap climbs smoothly across each step from bottom to top — every quintile is higher than the one above it. Whether the strong teacher culture causes the better attendance, or engaged students cause teachers to feel better about the school, or a third factor (principal, building, demographics) drives both is something this data alone can't separate.
Data analysis
Investigation run 2026-05-31.
TL;DR
Schools in the weakest fifth of teacher-voice scores (about 60% positive) average 43% chronic absenteeism. Schools in the strongest fifth (about 97% positive) average 33%. The 10-percentage-point gap climbs smoothly across every step of the ranking. Whether one causes the other is the open question.
Teacher voice ranking vs. chronic absenteeism (2023-24, 1,503 schools)
Each step up in the teacher-voice ranking corresponds to 2 to 3 fewer percentage points of chronic absenteeism. The gradient is smooth — no group of schools breaks the pattern.
Which causes which?
Three plausible directions, none distinguishable from this data: strong teacher culture causes student engagement, which causes attendance; schools with engaged students give teachers more reason to feel positive; or a third factor (principal quality, building, demographics) drives both. A useful next step would be to test whether last year's teacher-voice score predicts next year's attendance, which would point toward the first direction.
Adjusting for student-body challenge
Schools in the weakest teacher-voice fifth also tend to serve higher-need student populations (higher challenge-group rankings on the 1-to-10 scale). Part of the gap is confounded by that. A challenge-group-adjusted regression would shrink the apparent effect — though national research suggests the school-culture-to-attendance link survives most controls. Worth running locally.
What's next
Run a regression where last year's teacher-voice score predicts this year's attendance, to test the direction of the relationship. Cross-reference with the city Department of Education's teacher-turnover data (a separate dataset).
Methodology & replication recipe — the data sources, queries, and steps behind this analysis.