Conservatives tend to be smarter and more successful in their academic pursuits, so they end up going into fields with higher standards for admittance and higher rewards for high performance.
The "teaching" community is so desperate for teachers, that standards are low. With low standards come low rewards. Thus the best and brightest are attracted to other areas and the pool of teachers is made up of (1) mostly incompetent liberals, and (2) some good teachers who are motivated by a desire to teach and excel in spite of the terrible environment and low pay. That is why you have a few good teachers who tend to be conservative, and a lot of incompetent public-sector union-protected educrats who steadfastly resist any reform that would introduce competition or base compensation on performance.
"The "teaching" community is so desperate for teachers, that standards are low. With low standards come low rewards."
Could you elaborate on the "low standards" aspect please? As an interested observer, I've see the teacher's costs in time, trouble and money when they get post graduate degrees, and it seems pretty high.
They want to be a closed profession tho.....why shouldn't someone who is skilled in math or science be allowed to teach without taking all those "education" courses to be certified?
"The "teaching" community is so desperate for teachers, that standards are low. "
That doesn't just apply to k12. I just completed my college degree and the instructor in British Literature always asked me to answer the questions she didn't know how to answer. She called me the 'Jane Eyre expert' when she was the one who did her Master thesis on Jane Eyre! The one smart thing she said was that she couldn't understand the feminist view of Jane Eyre. She couldn't see it and neither could I.