A growing number of beginning teachers in Hawaii public schools are staying on the job longer, past the critical five-year mark experts say most likely determines whether a teacher will stick with or part with the profession.

Of the 785 teachers hired in school year 2010-11, 60 percent were still employed last school year, marking the highest five-year retention rate in at least a decade, state Department of Education data show. (The data do not include public charter school teachers.)

The state says it employed 12,700 teachers across 255 schools last school year. The department hires anywhere from 800 to 1,200 new teachers a year.

Hawaii’s five-year teacher retention rate dipped to a low of 44 percent for the cohort of teachers hired in 2004-05 but otherwise had hovered near the national average of 50 percent over the past decade before seeing an uptick three years ago.

Research on teacher turnover nationally shows while teaching is the most popular occupation in the country, in 2012 the average teacher stayed for five years — down from the average 15-year tenure in the 1980s. In Hawaii the average — and median — years of service for current teachers is 12, according to the DOE.

DOE officials credit what they call a more robust and disciplined induction and mentoring program in recent years that is designed to support teachers in their first to third years of teaching. The program varies by district but can include, for example, seasoned teachers meeting with beginner teachers for at least an hour once a week.

“One of the reasons people quit is because they’re struggling,” DOE Deputy Superintendent Stephen Schatz, a former teacher, said in a recent interview. “I think what’s happening is teachers are feeling like part of a team. One of the reasons teachers stay in the profession is because they’re feeling effective in their work, they’re feeling supported by their colleagues and by their principal. They feel like part of a family and feel like going to work every day.”

But the head of the teachers union contends the state is still losing too many teachers overall — roughly 1 in 10 teachers quit, retire or get terminated each year — resulting, he says, in perennial shortages and a reliance on out-of-state and emergency hires.

“We still don’t have enough teachers every year,” said Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association. “And the reason for the high turnover is because our teachers are the worst paid in the nation. They’re teaching in hot classrooms with 30 to 40 students, and they’re being micromanaged by a faulty evaluation system.”

Rosenlee, who’s been teaching for 18 years, added, “When you have highly trained, well-educated people, they have choices. Unfortunately, we’re not treating our teachers as professional or paying them as professionals.”

Under the existing HSTA contract, a newly hired licensed teacher with a bachelor’s degree earns a starting salary of $44,538, while the highest teacher salary is capped at $81,703. Nationally the average starting teacher salary is $36,141.

The union earlier this year negotiated additional compensation for teachers that includes a one-time bonus in the fall, a boost to their base salary in two years, more paid professional development training and a decrease in health insurance costs. That’s in addition to the annual 3 percent raises already built into the four-year contract that expires June 30, 2017.

DOE spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said attracting and retaining effective teachers is key to students’ success. She said a joint DOE-HSTA salary study last year found that, in general, Hawaii teachers earn roughly 4 percent less than teachers on the mainland.

“Given our high cost of living, this concerns us. Unfortunately, the study also found that most professionals in Hawaii are similarly paid less than their mainland counterparts,” she said. “Nevertheless, attracting and retaining effective educators is key to our students’ success, and we believe that competitive pay for our educators who have demonstrated their effective performance should be a priority investment for our state.”

Some teachers contend that widespread angst over sweeping education reforms rolled out in recent years has yet to show up in the form of beginning teachers fleeing the profession due to burnout and poor morale.

But even preliminary data for more recent hires are showing improvements. The two-year retention rates for teachers hired in 2012-13 and 2013-14, for example, were higher than in previous years at 82 percent and 81 percent, respectively.

“I think what happens is that all too often we talk about what we call the terms and conditions of employment: how much money are these people paid, what sort of benefits they have,” said Barbara Krieg, the DOE’s assistant superintendent of human resources. “But from an HR perspective, none of that’s going to help unless you have a supportive atmosphere.”

Krieg said feedback data show beginning teachers tend to seek emotional support and stress relief from their mentors.

“When I was a teacher, I don’t think anybody visited my classroom or provided me any coaching or feedback, really,” said Schatz, who started teaching in 1994. “The old-fashioned way of providing a mentor was to kind of say, ‘Mrs. Jones is in Room B3 if you need anything.’ That’s it. Depending on what kind of person you are, you may or may not access it. This is a more disciplined way to ensure that our folks are getting the support that they need when they begin with us.”

Michelle Kay said that when she moved to Hawaii from Illinois right out of college, she was fortunate enough to have a seasoned teacher “take me under her wing.” Now in her 15th year of teaching, Kay started this year as an instructional coach for the Farrington-Kaiser-Kalani complex area.

“I was fresh out of college, and that year we went on strike,” Kay recalled. “We didn’t have a mentoring program or anything structured through the state then.”

But an experienced female teacher, now retired, made sure she got the support she needed.

“Definitely, having her as my mentor, it really helped,” Kay said. “To have someone there, not only a big supporter, but someone who gives you constructive criticism and feedback. It’s why I’m still here. I think what she provided me is what our mentoring program now provides all new teachers.”

Heidi Armstrong, Campbell-Kapolei complex-area superintendent, said she’s seeing success with the induction and mentoring program in her 17 schools. With 19,000 students the complex is state’s largest, requiring the most teachers.

“Teaching is a very complicated, complex profession. They need support for everything from how to do teacher lessons, how to communicate with parents, how to deal with the public,” said Armstrong, who began her career with the DOE in 1988 as an elementary school math teacher. “With the induction and mentoring program, the mentors have at least one meeting a week with every new teacher for at least one hour. With all of this support, they’re still overwhelmed, but they feel supported and know where to turn when they get stuck — and inevitably they will get stuck.”

An end-of-year induction survey among the complex’s 133 first-year teachers last school year found 83 percent “strongly agreed” that their mentor helped them be a more effective teacher, Armstrong said. The same percentage strongly agreed that working with their mentor had an impact on their students’ learning. Only 2 percent said they planned to leave the profession.