SANTA FE, N.M. – New Mexico education officials will now require teacher attendance as one of several measures used in teacher performance evaluations despite objections from some school administrators.

Previously, New Mexico schools are required to use either teacher attendance or parent and student surveys for 10 percent to evaluate teacher performance, but a change announced in January and August will now require both measures to be incorporated into the reviews, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.

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State officials believe the change will bring more uniformity to the evaluation system, save money and increase learning time, according to KRQE.

Yet despite the repeated memos from the New Mexico Public Education Department, administrators in several school districts contend they were caught off guard when Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera implemented the change this week.

“I imagine teachers will not be happy about this,” Santa Fe Superintendent Veronica Garcia told the news site.

“I don’t see how a teacher who is ill in school can provide optimum instruction,” she said. “It’s not healthy for anyone to be at school with the flu.”

The New Mexican reports:

Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Kurt Steinhaus said he learned about the new rules during a conference call with Skandera about a month ago. He said he also talked to a colleague in the Ruidoso school district who was thrown by the change.

Education department spokesman Robert McEntyre told the news site that teacher absences because of family leave, military duty, jury duty, bereavement, religious leave or professional development do not count against them. Educators are also not penalized for their first three absences, he said.

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“Our students learn more and learn best when they have their qualified, professional teacher in the classroom,” McEntyre said. “Since attendance was first included in teacher evaluations, it’s estimated that New Mexico schools are collectively saving $3.5 million in costs for substitute teachers and adding 300,000 hours of instructional time back into our classrooms.”

Education Week reports that “more than 6.5 million students in 2013-14 attended a school where at least half of teachers missed 10 days of school or more, according to the most recent estimate from the U.S. Department of Education.”

Those statistics were confirmed by an Education Week Research Center analysis this summer that highlighted the devastating effects teacher absences have on student learning.

“The National Bureau of Economic Research has found that when teachers are absent for at least 10 days, there is a significant decrease in student outcomes. The decrease, according to one study, is equivalent to the difference between having a new teacher and one with two or three years of experience,” according to The Washington Post.

The Santa Fe school district’s most recent analysis of teacher absences, conducted in 2012, showed educators in that district miss an average of 17 work days a year, nearly double the national average of nine, the New Mexican reports.

In most school districts, the number of days teachers can take off each year is dictated by a contract with the local teachers union, which typically oppose any effort to evaluate educators based on their performance.

Grace Mayer, president of the National Education Association-Santa Fe, did not respond to the New Mexican’s request for comment.