A recent report has found that the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, has massively funded liberal and partisan political causes, far exceeding its counterparts in other states.
All that union spending, however, has not helped improve student achievement.
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The report, issued by the national grassroots group Defending Education, which promotes quality non-political education, examined the political expenditures of selected state and local teacher unions over a 10-year period starting from 2015.
UNIVERSITIES CANNOT SURVIVE AS LEFT-WING ECHO CHAMBERS
In its analysis of spending by union political action committees, Defending Education looked at the California Teachers Association PACs, plus similar PACs of teacher unions in Chicago, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Washington.
According to the report, the CTA PACs spent a staggering $106.4 million funding mostly liberal and partisan causes and candidates. To put that amount into perspective, the CTA spent five times more than the New York State United Teachers PAC and 20 times more than the Michigan Education Association PAC.
Emphasizing the disparity in spending even more, CTA has around 310,000 members, while the New York State United Teachers has around 600,000 members. That means that if we use those figures as the rough membership numbers for the period of the report, then the CTA spent $343 per member versus $34 per NYSUT member — that’s a big difference.
In fact, spending by the CTA PACs accounted for more than half the total amount of PAC spending — $201 million — of all the state and local PAC funding analyzed in the report.
Remember, too, the CTA’s political funds come from the dues of its members, who span the political and ideological spectrum.
Despite the heterogeneous views of its members, the CTA pushes a leftist activist social justice agenda “to eradicate structural and institutional racism, classism, linguicism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, religious bias and xenophobia.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that a lot of member dollars end up in the war chest of the Democratic Party.
Over 10 years, the CTA PACs gave nearly $17 million to the Democratic Party. In contrast, the union gave less than $25,000 to the Republican Party.
The CTA also dumped a boatload of money into campaigns to elect its preferred Democratic candidates.
For instance, the union spent more than $9.3 million promoting the election and re-election of Democrat State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
Recall that Thurmond has been harshly criticized for creating a toxic workplace, with Politico quoting a former employee who said: “It’s not the California Department of Education. It’s Tony Thurmond’s campaign headquarters. It’s not about the students of California.”
The CTA also spent huge sums on left-wing ballot initiatives, such as the more than $4 million that it poured into the unsuccessful 2020 campaign to pass Proposition 16, which would have brought back race preferences in college admissions and other government policies.
In addition, the CTA contributed more than $3.9 million to support Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2025 gerrymandering ballot initiative Proposition 50, which was designed to increase the number of Democrats in California’s congressional delegation.
Finally, the CTA funded fellow leftist PACs, such as the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California VOTES PAC, which received $50,000.
For parents and their children, the question is whether all this CTA political spending resulted in greater student learning in the classroom. The answer is a resounding “no.”
Looking at the 10-year span covered by the Defending Education report, student performance in math and reading in California has failed to improve.
On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) eighth grade math exam, 73% of California eighth graders failed to score at or above the proficient level in 2015. By 2024, despite all those years of big political spending by the CTA, the proportion of the state’s eighth graders failing to score at or above proficient increased to 75%.
On the NAEP eighth grade reading exam, the CTA’s decade of political funding failed to move the needle, with 72% of California students failing to score at or above the proficient level on both the 2015 and 2024 tests.
Students, however, are not the focus of the CTA’s political spending.
Rhyen Staley, the research director at Defending Education, said, “what the teachers unions value is political power and advancing a left-wing, social justice agenda.”
The CTA strides across California like a modern-day robber baron buying politicians, dictating policies, and blocking reforms. Sadly, as the union wields its massive political power for its own self-interest, it continues to send kids to the back of the school bus.
Lance Izumi is the senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute.
