This summary uses the Civil Rights Data Collection dataset released in early 2012 to raise questions and drive debate about the subject of teacher absence. This dataset comes from the first national survey to include school-level information on teacher absence. The measure constructed from this information is the percentage of teachers who were absent more than 10 times during the year. The Department of Education calls the measure a "leading indicator," a reasonable label given the documented relationship between absence rates measured at the teacher level and student achievement. Yet very little is known about the properties of this new school-level measure. This summary also notes that teacher absence is yet another item that can be added to the list of ways in which charter schools differ from traditional public schools. This summary also supplies evidence that students in schools serving high proportions of African American or Latino students are disproportionately exposed to teacher absence. With these and other findings, this summary seeks to draw attention to the too long-neglected subject of teacher absence. [For the full report, "Teacher Absence as a Leading Indicator of Student Achievement: New National Data Offer Opportunity to Examine Cost of Teacher Absence Relative to Learning Loss," see ED536902.]