The foundation says Utah lawmakers should stick to increasing pay only for the most hard-to-fill teaching positions and to provide mentors for new teachers. As a strategy for addressing attrition, that is not just bad advice, it's unrealistic and demeaning to teachers. And it provides legislators more reasons (as if any were needed) to avoid raising salaries in order to recruit and keep good teachers.

The report minimizes the facts: Teacher pay in Utah is shamefully low; many teachers just beginning their careers have to apply for food stamps in order to feed their children; our underpaid teachers deal daily with the challenges of the largest class sizes in the nation, demands for better test scores and a growing number of immigrant children whose parents do not speak English and who work two jobs to survive.

The foundation appears to throw up its hands in surrender to the economics of education in Utah - the state's large families and shrinking tax support for education as a percentage of income. We agree that class sizes realistically cannot be substantially reduced. But the report's conclusion that across-the-board teacher pay increases are not the answer contradicts its own research.

The foundation asked three Utah school districts and the State Office of Education and found that they all believe the most effective way to decrease teacher attrition is better salary and benefits. It also indicates that teachers nationally rated better salary or benefits as the reason most often cited by teachers who left the profession, after retirement and pursuit of another (higher paying?) career.

Utah's average teacher salary ranks sixth of the eight Mountain states. Its beginning-teacher pay ranks 45th in the nation and next to last among Mountain states.

Mentors might help keep teachers sane in their first three years, but a paycheck that lets them pay bills and buy groceries might keep them teaching in Utah.