CalSTRS vs. CalPERS: They're Not the Same System

Two large, separate California pension systems

CalSTRS — the California State Teachers' Retirement System — is, by its own description, the largest educator-only public pension fund in the world, serving California's public school educators and their beneficiaries. CalPERS — the California Public Employees' Retirement System — serves a broader population: the State of California itself, contracting public agencies, and school districts and charter schools, covering roles like state employees, local public agency employees, and non-teaching school staff such as classified employees.

The overlap that causes confusion is real: both systems can have members working in the same school district, sometimes in the same building. A teacher and the school's classified office staff might work for the same employer but belong to two completely different pension systems with no shared account.

The simplest way to tell which one is yours

If your job is a certificated teaching position in a California public school, you're almost certainly a CalSTRS member — that's the system's specific purpose. If you work for the state of California, a city, a county, another local public agency, or you're a non-teaching school employee (a classified position — clerical, custodial, paraeducator, and similar roles), CalPERS is more likely your system.

Both systems calculate benefits using a version of the same basic structure — service credit × an age factor × final compensation — but the specific multipliers, formulas, and rules are set independently by each system, and one system's numbers don't transfer to the other.

Different login, different contact point

Because they're separate organizations, a myCalSTRS account and a myCalPERS account are unrelated — logging into one won't show anything about the other, and each system has its own phone line, mailing address, and set of forms. If you're not sure which system covers you, checking your own pay stub for the retirement deduction, or asking your district's payroll or HR office directly, settles it faster than guessing from your job title alone.

Community college and charter school staff: check both

Community college and charter school employees are a common place this gets genuinely confusing, since staffing structures vary — some certificated instructional roles are CalSTRS-covered, while other positions at the same institution may be CalPERS-covered or covered by a different system entirely. If your role doesn't clearly match "classroom teacher" or "classified staff," checking your own pay stub deduction or asking HR directly is more reliable than assuming based on institution type.