California's education tailspin has been blamed on class sizes, on the property tax restrictions enforced by Proposition 13, on an influx of Spanish-speaking students. But no portrait of the schools' downfall would be complete without mention of the California Teachers Assn., or CTA, arguably the state's most powerful union and a political behemoth that has blocked meaningful education reform, protected failing and even criminal educators, and pushed for pay raises and benefits that have reached unsustainable levels.
The CTA's power dates back to September 1975, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed teachers to bargain collectively. Within 18 months, 600 of the 1,000 local CTA chapters had moved to collective bargaining. In the years since Rodda's passage, the CTA has launched more than 170 strikes.
The CTA's most important resource, however, isn't a pool of workers ready to strike; it's a fat bank account fed by mandatory dues that can run to more than $1,000 per member. In 2009, the union's income was more than $186 million, all of it tax exempt.
The CTA's size, financial resources and influence with the state's Democratic Party are enough to kill most pieces of hostile legislation. Nevertheless, there are some encouraging stirrings. Parents in groups such as Parent Revolution are starting to revolt against CTA orthodoxy, and unlike elected officials, parents are hard for the union to demonize. The state's many excellent charter schools have demonstrated that another way is possible, and they are growing in strength by the day.
These efforts have reframed the education question in starkly humanitarian terms: In the California public school system, are anyone's interests more important than the students'? It was a question that the CTA itself might have asked back when teachers entered the classroom to "teach good citizenship."
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