Who is the California Teacher's Association Watching Out For?

The California Teacher's Association (CTA) is possibly the most powerful union in the state. It lobbies hard and spends a lot of money in political battles.

But who are they watching out for?

The CTA says they are watching out for teachers, schools and students. With education spending being almost 50% of the state budget, the CTA carries a lot of clout when it speaks about education spending. The CTA is also going to have a lot to say about the current deficit situation and how much of a cut educaiton takes. If they don't want education taking a cut, they will pull political support (money) for candidates and educaiton won't take the hit.

However, CTA's over-riding goal is to defend its biggest victory: the passage of Proposition 98 in 1988. No other state has anything like this measure. It takes roughly 40 percent of the general fund out of the Legislature's hands, devotes it to education and locks it into the state constitution. In light of the current spending and deficit situation - this is a horrible victory for educaiton funding.

The goal of Prop. 98 was to have a stable source of funding for education. Local tax revenue for educaiton was drying up, mainly because the people voted to pass Prop. 13 which limited the amount property tax can raise each year. So the schools needed a different, and stable, source of funding. Prop. 98 was the option the CTA put out and got passed by initiative.

California used to be among the top 10 states in per pupil spending. This isn't the case anymore. After adjusting for California's high cost of living, the state has ranked in the bottom 10 in many school spending categories for more than two decades. However, this doesn't seem to matter to the CTA. They aren't advocating for more spending in the classroom, they are advocating for more spending - period. Not a per pupil raise, just a raise.

So why is Proposition 98 sacred to the CTA? Everything in education has taken a hit – academic programs, art and music, counseling, books, labs – but teacher salaries remain among the top 10 in the nation, reflecting California's high cost of living. Guess who pays for the CTA?

CTA has drafted a ballot initiative that would raise the sales tax by 1 cent and dedicate the money to education. The money could not be used on school administrative costs, but could be used to increase salaries and benefits for teachers and other staff. It doesn't dedicate the money to the classroom - which is what the CTA says they watch for. Nothing about this proposition dedicates the money to the students. It dedicates the money to teachers and staff - or doesn't - but it certainly isn't a proposition aimed at bettering the classroom. If that were the case, then the proposition would include language to force the money to be spent on students in the classroom. I might vote for that.

This approach would make an inflexible system even less flexible and perpetuate a "beggar-thy-neighbor" approach, pitting K-12 education against other state priorities. It isolates education, when this should be a time to build a broad coalition to rethink education finance in California. If nothing else, the continued pumping of money into a failing system has to stop. If the California education finance system were anything but a public system, the Board would be fired and possible in jail for fraud against the stockholders. At the very least the company would have to fold because it wasn't profitable.

Qualified, caring, committed teachers are the backbone of the education system. But by pursuing an agenda that puts Proposition 98 above all else, the CTA creates an atmosphere of winner-take-all competition in which education and the interests of children ultimately are the losers.
In the end, this prevents consideration of other options for school finance and contributes to the deadlock that threatens the public interest, not to mention the public schools of California.