New Data on Subs

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We've added a section on substitutes to our TR3 database, which contains policies governing teachers in over 100 school districts nationwide.  The new section includes policies on substitutes' education and licensure; evaluation; pay and benefits; and long-term subs.  You can sort and compare all of the substitute policies we've collected for the TR3 districts by using our custom report page.

We created the substitutes section for two reasons.  First, in the eight school districts whose teacher policies we've studied extensively, we found that on average each teacher is absent between six and thirteen days, depending on the district—and that excludes long-term leave.  That means for every thousand teachers, there are between 6,000 and 13,000 instances each year where a sub could be used!  Since subs collectively spend a lot of time in front of students, we wanted to know what sort of policies districts have in place to select, evaluate, and compensate these teachers.

Substitutes are also important to us because in Miami, where we did our latest school district study, 38-percent of the teachers we surveyed said they'd been substitutes before becoming full-time teachers.  We wanted to take a closer look at the rules governing this teacher pipeline.

To pique your interest, here's what some of our new substitute data shows. Out of the 100+ districts we looked at:

  • 24% make subs get a substitute certificate or teaching credentials

  • 30% require subs to have a bachelor's degree; 29% require some college; 9% require a high school diploma or GED

  • 13% require subs to be evaluated; 7% require evaluations for long-term subs only

  • Daily rates of pay range from $50 - $234 per day

To check out more substitute data go to TR3's custom report page.

Ginger Moored