Wisconsin

An organization that backs private school vouchers is campaigning against the recall of the eight Republican Wisconsin senators who backed Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation. The so-called American Federation for Children (AFC) is an ardent supporter of the voucher scheme in Milwaukee, the unsuccessful voucher program which Walker and his GOP allies want to export to other parts of the state as part of bolstering the Republicans’ attacks on public schools and teachers.

Listen to their robocall defending GOP Senator Sheila Harsdorf:

At the same time that Walker and the Republicans proposed a massive $834 million cut to public schools, endangering the state’s esteemed public education system, they seek to spend more taxpayer money on a wasteful voucher program that has been unable to improve the education of Milwaukee students. A comprehensive study in 2009 found “no overall statistically significant difference between [voucher school] and [public school] student achievement growth in either math or reading one year after they were carefully matched to each other,” and that fourth graders in the voucher program were actually performing worse than comparable public school students.

While the private school voucher scheme did nothing to improve education, it did funnel taxpayer dollars to religious schools: of the 120 schools receiving vouchers examined in the study, 95 were religious and 7 operate within a religious tradition.

Renowned education scholar Diane Ravitch, once a proponent of the so-called “school choice” movement, told OnMilwaukee.com that the voucher program “has not worked”:

Milwaukee is indeed the nation's laboratory for assessing the value of school choice. The advocates of school choice predicted that academic performance in choice schools would not only soar, but that the competitive pressure would cause achievement in the regular district schools to improve. None of this has happened. The latest studies show that students in voucher schools and in charter schools do not perform any differently from those in the regular public schools.

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"Reformers" in Milwaukee have been pursuing strategies that we now know are ineffective. The more time and resources devoted to ineffective strategies, the less attention there is to finding useful improvements. Choice got the support of foundations and business leaders, but it has not worked.

Even the state schools superintendent Tom Evers agreed that “choice schools have proven to be no more effective and in some cases less effective than Milwaukee Public Schools.”

But organizations like the AFC ignore and dismiss the clear findings that the Milwaukee voucher program is a wrongheaded and ill-designed effort to improve education, and instead want to expand the program to more school districts and tear down the public education system. Now, they want to make sure that Republican legislators keep their jobs and continue to support vouchers and bust unions representing public school teachers.

A writer for the far-right Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview wonders whether any of the Wisconsin labor protesters are genuine Christians, and also says she is “pretty certain” that Martin Luther King Jr. would have opposed the Wisconsinites protesting Governor Scott Walker’s plans to dismantle the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Of course, it was King who condemned so-called “right to work” laws because their “purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone,” and also told the AFL-CIO that “our needs are identical with labor’s needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor.”

But according to Singer, who used his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” as evidence, King would have disapproved of the demonstrators. Singer even believes that any Christian should disapprove of the protesters who will “lead this nation to anarchy”:

Note that King acknowledged that the Birmingham city government had a legitimate right to require groups to have a permit before leading a peaceful demonstration in their city. However, knowing that his organization had been denied a permit as a way of preventing them from showing their opposition to unjust segregation laws, he willingly broke the permit law, yet he showed his "highest respect for law" by his willingness to pay the penalty.

What, by contrast, have some of the teachers in Wisconsin done? They called in sick (a lie), they accepted fake doctor's excuses in an attempt to cover up their actions (another lie), they forced their schools to close (defrauding their employers, cheating the children they claim to care about, and causing working parents to scramble to find day care), and they now expect to be paid for their deceit (estimates of the cost for paying for their "sick days" range from $6 million to $10 million, which means they are willing to steal from the taxpayers who must foot the bill).

In other words, they want to protest what they consider an unjust law (which is certainly their right and duty as American citizens), they broke the law to do it, but they are not willing to pay the price for their civil disobedience. I seriously doubt King -- who knew something about paying the steep cost of his convictions -- would approve for he knew too well that such cowardly, narcissistic and dishonest actions would only lead to anarchy.

As I watched the demonstrations on television, I had to wonder how many of the people in the crowd consider themselves Christians -- and how many of those Christians were participating in committing this act of fraud against the state of Wisconsin.

I can only hope that those who are guilty will have an attack of conscience: that the Spirit will bring to their mind the list of sins which God hates the most (Proverbs 6:16-18) so they can see their fault, repent, confess, and then make restitution to those they have harmed. If they don't, then they should expect to pay a different price -- one determined by a righteous and just God who never overlooks sin.

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However, we won't have the wisdom we need from God if we have put ourselves outside His will by committing the sins He most despises, the sins that will only lead this nation to anarchy.

I have got to admit that I have no idea what, according to the Alliance Defense Fund, differentiates an acceptable establishment of religion from one that is unacceptable, other than whether it corresponds to ADF 's right-wing agenda.

For instance, ADF says that if Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed, it means the government will "effectively establish preferred religions or religious beliefs."

Yet, at the same time, ADF is defending the National Day of Prayer as entirely constitutional:

ADF attorneys sent letters to mayors across the country two weeks before Crabb’s decision, urging them to observe and participate in last May’s National Day of Prayer event, and resist unfounded demands from activist groups to discontinue honoring the day ... However, atheists and activist groups have challenged the constitutionality of local government recognition of the event by claiming Establishment Clause violations. ADF attorneys argue that such contentions are without merit.

So, according to the ADF, a government-ordained day of prayer is in no way a violation of the Establishment Clause ... but a community college showing the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" is an outrageous violation?

In September 2009, the president of Lakeshore Technical College announced that a faculty in-service session would include the film For the Bible Tells Me So, which includes political and religious figures promoting the view that homosexual conduct is consistent with biblical standards of morality.

The film asserts that those believing homosexual behavior to be wrong have “a fifth grade understanding of God.” In one of the film’s leaders’ guides, some religious leaders and scholars contend that the Bible has been “misused” to condemn homosexual behavior, thus allegedly harming individuals and families. Another of the film’s guides includes extensive materials that re-interpret Scripture in a way that justifies such conduct.

Some faculty and staff formally complained to Lakeshore officials about the program. In November 2009, they requested that an upcoming in-service include a presentation defending the biblical perspective on homosexual conduct. The college refused this and a similar request made in August 2010. Meanwhile, the college also used For the Bible Tells Me So as an assignment in some of its psychology and sociology classes.

ADF sent Lakeshore a letter [PDF] demanding that they cease and desist: 

[W]hen the Founding Fathers wrote that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," they ensured that the state would not declare some religious beliefs superior to others. The fundamental principle they embedded in the Bill of Rights is one of denominational neutrality.

By showing For the Bible Tells Me So, LTC flaunted his fundamental First Amendment principle. This film overly favors denominations and religious sects that favor homosexual conduct, makes Biblical arguments about the morality of such conduct, and denigrates the theological views of those who do not favor it. And two federal courts have already recognized that such programs are unconstitutional.

And ADF has apparently succeeded, with Lakeshore agreeing to stop showing the film and even allowing concerned staff "to hold a campus-wide event to present the Bible's actual teachings on homosexual conduct."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that a Juneau County [WI] District Attorney Scott Southworth has sent a letter to local school districts that they could face arrest and jail if they teach the state's newly created sex ed curriculum that requires students to learn about birth control and avoiding sexually transmitted diseases on the grounds that they will be contributing to the delinquency of minors: 

A Wisconsin prosecutor is warning that teachers who teach the state's new sex education curriculum could be arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of children.

Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth told the Wisconsin State Journal that the state's sex education law, which was signed by Gov. Jim Doyle in February, is a "sick and shameful piece of legislation" that encourages illegal sex among minors. And he sent a letter to five school districts urging them to temporarily drop all sex education classes until the Legislature can repeal the law.

"Forcing our schools to instruct children on how to utilize contraceptives encourages our children to engage in sexual behavior, whether as a victim or an offender," Southworth wrote in the March 24 letter. "It is akin to teaching children about alcohol use, then instructing them on how to make mixed alcoholic drinks."

The new law requires schools that teach sex education to include curriculum about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases as part of comprehensive classes. But Southworth said it essentially forces school districts to "instruct children on sex-for-pleasure." And in his letter, he warned the law promotes the sexual assault of children, exposes teachers to possible criminal liability, undermines parental authority, requires districts to condone controversial sexual behavior, gives the contraceptive industry access to school children and may expose districts to civil litigation.

"This, in turn, will lead to more child sexual assaults," he said in the letter.

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Southworth, a Republican, said teachers will be pushed into "encouragement and advocacy" that "could lead to criminal charges." And he said districts may be forced to teach about homosexuality as well as transgender and transsexual people. He also said the law will allow "health care providers" such as Planned Parenthood to effectively "market sexually-oriented products to our children."

A copy of the letter can be found here [PDF].