Rarely do students, teachers, or administrators regard substitutes as full professionals who meet accepted standards of practice. Some would say that substitutes should receive combat pay rather than the modest compensation typically meted out to them.
Children frequently view the substitute's entry as a signal to misbehave.
Problems typically faced by substitutes or those who hire them are not new. This Digest provides an overview of substitute teaching in K-12 schools. It looks at why substitutes are needed, factors that attract individuals to the work, and what school administrators can do to facilitate good substitute teaching. Obviously, schools employ substitutes to replace absent teachers, but what may not be equally evident are some of the contemporary factors that produce teacher absence. Traditionally, teacher absenteeism has occurred for the same reasons that employees in other fields are absent e.g., personal or family illness or emergency, jury duty, professional development activities, short-term military service.