[5][6] These institutes saw generally low attendance, typically fewer than a hundred teachers, all of them male.

[6] CTA won its first major legislative victory in 1866 with a law providing free public schools to California children.

More early victories for organized labor established bans on using public school funding for sectarian religious purposes (1878–79); free textbooks for all students in grades 1-8 (1911); the first teacher tenure and due process law (1912);[9] and a statewide pension, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (1913).

While the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 made collective bargaining a lawful, protected activity in the private sector, it did not include public workers or teachers.

After a decade of school strikes and teacher organizing, California K-14 educators won the right to bargain collectively in 1975 when the CTA-sponsored Educational Employment Relations Act, also known as the Rodda Act, was signed into law by Gov.