When legislators consider raising teacher salaries, they most often speak in terms of bonuses for teachers who lift children's test scores or who complete extra training. They frown on any proposal for a significant across-the-board pay increase.

The weighted pupil unit, 80 percent of which pays teacher salaries, was increased 6 percent by the 2006 Legislature, the largest bump in the WPU in 16 years. Still, the increase did little to make Utah compensation as attractive as packages offered in Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada.

The irony is that Utah universities are turning out well-trained graduates with education degrees and teaching certificates who would like to stay in Utah but find they can't afford to feed a family on a starting teacher's salary.

Instead, many are lured to states where teachers with comparable experience and education can take home thousands of dollars more per year. Nevada's Clark County even offers new teachers a signing bonus.

It takes many years of experience and advanced degrees to reach Utah's average yearly salary of $40,000, and beginning teachers' pay ranges between $23,000 and $30,000, with a few exceptions in individual districts. And raises come slowly. In Las Vegas, probably Utah's chief competitor, a first-grade teacher with seven years experience would earn $36,000 a year. In Jordan District, it takes 11 years to reach that figure.

Even if a Utah college graduate takes a job with a Utah school district, the odds are against that person staying long. A third of all teachers quit within the first three years. Poor pay is a primary reason that the state is losing 1,175 teachers a year. At that rate, school districts will face a shortage of about 80,000 teachers in the coming 20 years.

Without a commitment to hiring and keeping quality teachers that includes offering competitive compensation, Utah will lose its already tenuous reputation as a state where education is a priority.

That is a loss we can't afford.