XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: limey@live.com   
      
   In 1962, as tensions ran high between school districts and   
   unions across the country, members of the National Education   
   Association gathered in Denver for the organization’s 100th   
   annual convention. Among the speakers was Arthur F. Corey,   
   executive director of the California Teachers Association (CTA).   
   “The strike as a weapon for teachers is inappropriate,   
   unprofessional, illegal, outmoded, and ineffective,” Corey told   
   the crowd. “You can’t go out on an illegal strike one day and   
   expect to go back to your classroom and teach good citizenship   
   the next.”   
      
   Fast-forward nearly 50 years to May 2011, when the CTA—now the   
   single most powerful special interest in California—organized a   
   “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of   
   the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document   
   suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including   
   following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close   
   major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as   
   Microsoft, that backed education reform. The week’s centerpiece   
   was an occupation of the state capitol by hundreds of teachers   
   and student sympathizers from the Cal State University system,   
   who clogged the building’s hallways and refused to leave. Police   
   arrested nearly 100 demonstrators for trespassing, including   
   then–CTA president David Sanchez. The protesting teachers had   
   left their jobs behind, even though their students were   
   undergoing important statewide tests that week. With the passage   
   of 50 years, the CTA’s notions of “good citizenship” had   
   vanished.   
      
   So had high-quality public education in California. Seen as a   
   national leader in the classroom during the 1950s and 1960s, the   
   country’s largest state is today a laggard, competing with the   
   likes of Mississippi and Washington, D.C., at the bottom of   
   national rankings. The Golden State’s education tailspin has   
   been blamed on everything from class sizes to the property-tax   
   restrictions enforced by Proposition 13 to an influx of Spanish-   
   speaking students. But no portrait of the system’s downfall   
   would be complete without a depiction of the CTA, a political   
   behemoth that blocks meaningful education reform, protects   
   failing and even criminal educators, and inflates teacher pay   
   and benefits to unsustainable levels.   
      
   The CTA began its transformation in September 1975, when   
   Governor Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed   
   California teachers to bargain collectively. Within 18 months,   
   600 of the 1,000 local CTA chapters moved to collective   
   bargaining. As the union’s power grew, its ranks nearly doubled,   
   from 170,000 in the late 1970s to approximately 325,000 today.   
   By following the union’s directions and voting in blocs in low-   
   turnout school-board elections, teachers were able to handpick   
   their own supervisors—a system that private-sector unionized   
   workers would envy. Further, the organization that had once   
   forsworn the strike began taking to the picket lines. Today, the   
   CTA boasts that it has launched more than 170 strikes in the   
   years since Rodda’s passage.   
      
   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 more than $1,000 per member. In   
   2009, the union’s income was more than $186 million, all of it   
   tax-exempt. The CTA doesn’t need its members’ consent to spend   
   this money on politicking, whether that’s making campaign   
   contributions or running advocacy campaigns to obstruct reform.   
   According to figures from the California Fair Political   
   Practices Commission (a public institution) in 2010, the CTA had   
   spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on   
   political campaigning—more than any other donor in the state. In   
   fact, the CTA outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil   
   industry, and the tobacco industry combined.   
      
   All this money has helped the union rack up an imposing number   
   of victories. The first major win came in 1988, with the passage   
   of Proposition 98. That initiative compelled California to spend   
   more than 40 percent of its annual budget on education in grades   
   K–12 and community college. The spending quota eliminated   
   schools’ incentive to get value out of every dollar: since   
   funding was locked in, there was no need to make things run cost-   
   effectively. Thanks to union influence on local school boards,   
   much of the extra money—about $450 million a year—went straight   
   into teachers’ salaries. Prop. 98’s malign effects weren’t   
   limited to education, however: by essentially making public   
   school funding an entitlement rather than a matter of   
   discretionary spending, it hastened California’s erosion of   
   fiscal discipline. In recent years, estimates of mandatory   
   spending’s share of the state’s budget have run as high as 85   
   percent, making it highly difficult for the legislature to   
   confront the severe budget crises of the past decade.   
      
   In 1991, the CTA took to the ramparts again to combat   
   Proposition 174, a ballot initiative that would have made   
   California a national leader in school choice by giving families   
   universal access to school vouchers. When initiative supporters   
   began circulating the petitions necessary to get it onto the   
   ballot, some CTA members tried to intimidate petition signers   
   physically. The union also encouraged people to sign the   
   petition multiple times in order to throw the process into   
   chaos. “There are some proposals so evil that they should never   
   go before the voters,” explained D. A. Weber, the CTA’s   
   president. One of the consultants who organized the petitions   
   testified in a court declaration at the time that people with   
   union ties had offered him $400,000 to refrain from distributing   
   them. Another claimed that a CTA member had tried to run him off   
   the road after a debate on school choice.   
      
   Weber and his followers weren’t successful in keeping the   
   proposition off the ballot, but they did manage to delay it for   
   two years, giving themselves time to organize a   
   counteroffensive. They ran ads, recalls Ken Khachigian, the   
   former White House speechwriter who headed the Yes on 174   
   campaign, “claiming that a witches’ coven would be eligible for   
   the voucher funds and [could] set up a school of its own.” They   
   threatened to field challengers against political candidates who   
   supported school choice. They bullied members of the business   
   community who contributed money to the pro-voucher effort. When   
   In-N-Out Burger donated $25,000 to support Prop. 174, for   
   instance, the CTA threatened to press schools to drop contracts   
   with the company.   
      
   In 1993, Prop. 174 finally came to a statewide vote. The union   
   had persuaded March Fong Eu, the CTA-endorsed secretary of   
   state, to alter the proposition’s heading on the ballot from   
   PARENTAL CHOICE to EDUCATION VOUCHERS—a change in wording that   
   cost Prop. 174 ten points in the polls, according to Myron   
   Lieberman in his book The Teacher Unions. The initiative, which   
   had originally enjoyed 2–1 support among California voters,   
      
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