vouchers.


It has thwarted the agendas of governors and even President Obama, whose administration has tried and failed to enlist California in its effort to make sweeping changes in the country’s education system.

At odds with former Gov. Gray Davis over education policy in 2003, CTA’s lobbyist casually suggested a recall election to Republican operative Sal Russo, a conversation that helped fuel the first ouster of a California governor — the first Democrat to hold the post in 16 years — and the election of Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When the actor-turned-governor vowed to break CTA’s stranglehold on the Legislature, the union derailed his plans. His political scalp hangs in the fifth-floor conference room of the union’s Sacramento headquarters: a framed parody of Schwarzenegger as “True Liar” (a play on one ofstudents. After years of battling unsuccessfully to pass accountability measures in the Legislature, those groups have turned to the courts.


In lawsuits against the state and the Los Angeles Unified School District, they allege that a number of union-backed laws “prevent school administrators from prioritizing or even considering the interests of their students” and perpetuate gross inequalities in California’s education system.

California teachers have one of the shortest probationary periods in the country — lifetime tenure after two years in the classroom. If they are subsequently disciplined, an arduous dismissal process begins that can require years of paperwork and hearings before a teacher can be fired.

Dismissals are often overturned by an appeals panel made up of a judge and two educators. Layoffs due to budget cuts are based on seniority,