[tokenadult]

The sad and infuriating thing is that good teachers leaving public service is precisely what conservative groups strive for

I challenge you directly to find any example of a conservative person saying that they want good teachers to leave public service. Most voters and taxpayers who have considered the issue want bad teachers to leave the public payroll, to make more room for good teachers. Young people from poor families need to be taught well to help children from poor families advance in developed countries,[1] and several researchers on education suggest that simply encouraging the very worst teachers to change careers might have a huge benefit for school effectiveness for whole countries.[2]

[1] http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

[2] http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/economic-value-hig...

[JediWing]

You expect them to come out and say it? How quaint.

Private corporations want government sponsored private education. For example, (thankfully ex) governor of Pennsylvania has made aggressive funding cuts to traditional public education, and he was heavily funded by private schools, to the point where his radio appearances on the local talk network were sponsored by "PA cyber charter school".

On top of that, traditional public schools are union, and the political leanings of unions are well known.

Defunding and destroying non private schools is an obvious goal of the conservative movement.

[debacle]

There are many wide-right libertarians who want to completely dismantle the public education system. Reducing the overall quality of public school teachers advances their cause.

[tokenadult]

That's not the same thing that I asked. Nor have you given any examples of anyone saying what I was asking about.

AFTER EDIT: I just received in today's postal mail a mailpiece from a public advocacy organization (I'm not familiar with the organization) pointing out that current union contracts in Minnesota's public schools still require that school districts that have to downsize staff (as some must do as the number of school-age children in Minnesota declines) have to lay off teachers by seniority, not by effectiveness. This organization's policy argument is that any time a school district hires, lays off, or promotes teachers, it should do so on the basis of demonstrated helpfulness to learners learning, not by the order in which the teachers were first hired. That makes sense as a way to staff schools better to help learners, which is what teachers are all about.