By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – If you’re going to criticize teachers unions, you’d better make sure you (or your family or business associates) have no skeletons in the closet.

Union apologists will dig through your past and use anything they can find to punish you for questioning the power and wisdom of Big Labor.

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Consider the case of Campbell Brown, who gained fame as a respected CNN White House correspondent, and Michelle Rhee, the former D.C. schools chancellor who now heads the reform organization StudentsFirst.

Last week Brown authored a piece for the Wall Street Journal, accusing New York’s United Federation of Teachers of spending big bucks in legal fees to defend teachers who sexually abuse children.

Her accusations were entirely correct. Over the course of the past year, there have been dozens of media reports of union teachers being suspended or fined – but not fired – for committing various sexual acts with children. This happens because the UFT insists on defending the teachers, and the cases frequently go to arbitration.

The problem is that the arbitrators are jointly chosen by the school district and the union. To remain employed, they know that they must rule in the union’s favor at least part of the time, even if that means sending dangerous teachers back into the classroom.

Brown made that simple point, and now friends of the unions are out to get her. They’re not claiming the things she wrote are untrue. That would be impossible. The details of the sickening arbitration cases are there for all to see.

Instead, they question Brown’s right to address educational issues.

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Crooksandliers.com, an obviously Marxist website, says Brown “has absolutely no business talking about education in any way” because she “has no classroom experience or anything to suggest that she has authority when it comes to public education.”

The suggestion is that nobody but teachers have a right to discuss public education. Not even us poor, ignorant taxpayers who fund the schools and provide the teacher’s paychecks. The unions think we should all just step aside and let them run things the way they want, because, after all, they’re the professionals.

The sad fact is that we let the unions call all the shots in public education for four long decades. That hands-off policy brought us failing schools, graduates who can’t read and burned out (or perverted) teachers who can’t be fired due to tenure.

Perhaps we should start listening to non-educators like Brown a bit more.

The blogger (who lacked the courage to identify himself or herself) didn’t stop at questioning Brown’s credentials. He or she went on to point out that Brown’s husband, Dan Senor, is on the board of the New York chapter of StudentsFirst, Rhee’s organization.

Then the blogger dug up 2009 allegations that Rhee’s husband, Kevin Johnson, misused grant money at a charter school where he was principal, and was “also under investigation for inappropriate sexual conduct with a 16-year-old student at the school.”

The blogger offered no evidence that the allegations were true, or that Johnson was ever convicted or disciplined for anything. The goal was to smear him, because his wife is Michelle Rhee, who has a professional connection to Dan Senor, who is married to Campbell Brown.

So how does any of this excuse the UFT for defending pedophile teachers in New York?

It doesn’t. It’s just an obvious attempt to divert attention from the fact that the teachers union cares more about keeping its members employed than it does about protecting children from sexual molesters.

It won’t work. But it does remind us that the union and its flunkies are willing to sink to any level to defend their turf and intimidate their critics.