That was the case at the annual Utah Education Deans' Colloquium Thursday, where the teacher shortage was a central theme. After discussing everything from a stagnant new teacher pool to ranks of retiring teachers and a double-digit turnover rate, compensation finally came up during a question-and-answer period.

"All anecdotal evidence and conventional wisdom is that low salaries are having a major effect," said David Sperry, a Utah System of Higher Education scholar in residence. Utah teachers make an average starting salary of about $26,500.

Sperry studied teacher supply and demand across the state during the 2005-2006 school year and presented the results Thursday. His report focused on raw numbers illustrating the problem but left the causes up for discussion.

He boiled the dilemma down to basic supply and demand.

It's no secret that Utah's burgeoning student population is fueling demand for teachers. The bursting Jordan School District hired 766 new teachers this year and expects to need 26 fully staffed new schools in the next decade, Superintendent Barry Newbold told the crowd. Next year, the Utah Office of Education estimates, classrooms across Utah will serve 14,000 new students, who will require hundreds of new teachers.

Yet nearly 3,000 teachers left their jobs last year, though perhaps 10 percent of them transferred within the state, the study found. Roughly half of the exiting teachers retired, according to districts that keep such data, and nearly 48 percent had been teaching fewer than five years. Districts across the state saw an 11 percent turnover rate last year.

When surveyed about hiring new teachers, most school districts reported "some" or "extreme" difficulty, especially in math, science and special education.

That's partly because Utah's educator supply can't keep pace. State colleges and universities have produced flat or declining numbers of new teachers for years, despite recent legislation allowing alternative routes to licensing and the addition of four new colleges of education, Sperry reported.

And although an average of 79 percent of Utah education graduates take jobs in Utah schools, many leave within their first few years, the study suggested. Last year the state minted nearly 2,600 new teachers, but saw more than 1,000 teachers leave after fewer than five years on the job.

The reasons were varied in districts that asked why. After retirement, the most common answer was "personal and family issues." Those issues ranged from pregnancy and child rearing to inability to afford housing, Sperry said.

Researchers need to stop lumping such diverse drivers into a single category if they want to get a better handle on Utah's teacher shortage, said Betsy Escandon, a research analyst at the Utah Foundation, a nonprofit public policy research organization.

"The categories they're using aren't very informative," she said, noting that public policy can affect whether teachers can afford housing, but not whether they leave work to raise kids. She also urged research probing how college students decide whether to major in education or pursue a teaching career.

"We need data on how those people make those decisions," she said. "Increasing salary alone won't do it."

---

* NICOLE STRICKER can be contacted at nstricker@sltrib.com or 801-257-8999Â.