State Council

What is the CTA?

CTA is California's largest professional employee organization, representing more than 340,000 public school teachers, counselors, psychologists, librarians, other non-supervisory certificated personnel, and Education Support Professionals (ESPs). It is affiliated with the 2.8 million-member National Education Association.

More than 1,100 chapters or local teachers associations are chartered as CTA affiliates. Two unique CTA chapters are "statewide" affiliates: The California Faculty Association is the bargaining agent for professors in the California State University system, and the Community College Association represents members in 42 bargaining chapters who work in 72 community college districts.

CTA's top policy-making body is the State Council of Education. The council's nearly 800 delegates meet four times a year in Los Angeles. These delegates are elected by their local membership and can serve up to three, three-year terms. A single delegate represents approximately six hundred members. Carleen Maselli, a math teacher at Benicia High School and member of the BTA Bargaining Team, currently represents the Benicia Teachers Association and Travis Teachers Association. Delegates create and establish language for the CTA policy handbook, which sets the direction for CTA’s political actions, and actions CTA leadership will follow in regards to its role as teacher advocate. They also elect the three state-level CTA officers and the CTA Board of Directors.

Please read Carleen’s State Council Reports for important updates and visit www.CTA.org for current news and information.

State Council Report - October 2007

The highlight of this October’s council was a very controversial and spirited discussion about the CTA Educational Change Revised Workgroup Report.

This group presented a 5 part report for recommendations for educational change. The 5 parts included:

1) Adequacy and Equity in Funding
2) Teacher Compensation
3) Teacher Development
4) Assistance to Schools
5) Assessment and Testing

The focus of the debate centered on part 2 for teacher compensation. On Saturday there was a lot of debate on Robert’s Rule Procedure as the emotions were strong on both sides of the issue. On Sunday the report was brought back to the floor and Council voted to table this portion of the report and send it back to the committee to revise the language. The following is a summary of this portion of the report. To download a PDF version of the full report, click here.

Teacher Salaries

A. “Teacher salaries have been and continue to be lower than those of other educated professional. This fact exacerbates and existing teacher shortage and threatens the progress we have made in improving instruction. We cannot recruit and maintain a professional teaching force if we continue to allow teacher salaries to lag . . .

. . . the single salary schedule based on step and column that rewards experience and education/training has been the model for paying teachers…(it) is widely accepted because it is seen as less arbitrary, clearer and more predictable.”

The report states its idea that step and column will continue to be the foundation of teacher pay UNTIL alternatives are developed that share the characteristics stated above.

Incentives and Rewards

B. The argument lies in that many teachers are saying that there is little incentive and rewards to develop professional knowledge and skills to develop their professional knowledge and support a climate of experimentation and innovation. It is for this reason this CTA workgroup is supporting the development of ALTERNATIVE COMPENSATION MODELS for teacher pay.

Alternative Pay Models

C. Alternative pay models are neither to be “merit pay” nor to be based on standardized test scores. They are to be voluntary and locally bargained and funded by new money above and beyond step and column.

Alternative Compensation Systems

D. The group reports that research indicates that there is substantial interest among teachers in California in alternative compensation systems as long as they are rational, objective and fair and are developed and implemented in a manner that is widely recognized as inclusive, sensitive and reasonable.

To download a PDF version of the full report, click here.

Additional Notes and Observations

1. CTA sent a survey and found younger teachers wanted to be paid for their innovation and expertise…for being outstanding teachers, and to keep them in the profession they want to be paid more. Council has not seen as a whole (to my knowledge) the results of this actual survey, what was on the survey, to whom it was distributed nor the demographics of the survey. Many council representatives, including myself, have expressed a concern over this.

2. When CTA talks research about other districts using alternative compensation models they have only discussed Denver and Minnesota. Denver’s model was introduced to you last year. It was voluntary to veteran teachers to opt in, but new teachers had no choice. They had to be placed with the alternative compensation model. As of January last year, the President of Denver’s teacher association had not opted in. For more information on Denver’s model you may visit www.denverprocomp.org.

3. Minnesota only offered the idea of alternative compensation, but showed no representations of any of the alternative compensation models used.

4. It does not appear, as I stated above, that alternative compensation models are intended to be above and beyond, step and column, but that the ultimate goal is to replace them.

5. I have a concern for how merit pay will reflect fairly across all courses. For the core courses math and English are a hot button for all politicians and also very difficult courses for many students, as is science. Should the teachers pawn off the intervention courses to all the new teachers to boost their own merit pay? How will their merit pay be reflected? What about fine arts? If those courses have students who want to explore art but are not artistically inclined, will the teachers be penalized for not performing? Should art teachers test students to ensure they are qualified artists for their courses? What about PE? How will you measure student improvement? Will you have to measure health factors such as weight and BMI…how would our PE teachers control what goes on outside the classroom with diet and daily exercise beyond their control?

6. How will this affect collective bargaining? Will everyone be out for themselves? If one teacher is happy with his or her salary, will he/she be able to see iniquity in other’s situation and stand up and fight with them? Will it divide and conquer the teacher’s as a force? Will we be able to negotiate fair cost of living increases without a step and column, or will it force us into a lower paying model as incentives remain the same throughout the years regardless of inflation?

I realize these may be extreme examples but they are questions that run across my mind.

Final Note

I’d like to hear from you on this issue. Please let me know if you like the idea of alternative compensation or not at why and e-mail it back to me at cmaselli@sbcglobal.net if you think CTA should support and pursue Alternative Compensation Models for teacher pay. The workgroup will bring a revised report back in January, but if everyone responds, I will have something to take back to the floor during debate. I am looking for a mandate from Benicia and Travis, so please help me out and give me your feedback.

Carleen Maselli
State Council, Sol-1/District A

Archived State Council Reports