The teachers union that’s failing California?

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.

Senik goes on to explain how the CTA is using its “fat bank account fed by
mandatory dues that can run to more than $1,000 per member” to maintain and
build its political dominance in the state. In the past decade alone, Senik
notes, “the CTA had spent more than $210 million…on political campaigning — more
than any other donor in the state.”