By Sven R Larson, Ph.D. The issue of tolling I-80 is once again at the top of the news cycle, courtesy of Senator von Flatern, who wants to add a third lane on each side that would be used by cars and passenger vehicles only. He proposes that tolls charged to Wyoming drivers would be paid through the state's federal mineral royalties. Senator von F...

By Sven R Larson, Ph.D. How would you feel about a new kind of tax to fund our highways, one that was based on the miles you drive? Would you like to see it added to the taxes we already pay? In anticipation of topics that will be discussed in the interim committee season, please take a moment and consider the following idea. Suppose the legislatur...

As this article discusses, "Even cannabis advocates, like Rob Kampia, the co-founder of the Marijuana Policy Project, acknowledge that they have always viewed medical marijuana laws primarily as a way to protect recreational users." Read more from Alex Berenson as he discusses the intriguing evidence of a link between rising cannabis use and increa...

"Mr. First Amendment" and Constitutional attorney Benjamin Barr tells us the story. 

by Jessica Leach When education choice is mentioned in Wyoming, the reply often is, "school choice won't work in Wyoming", or "Wyoming doesn't have enough students to support different choices". Children living in Wyoming's most remote localities, however, would simply disagree. Grace Anderson, a graduating senior from Crook County, boasts an impre...

Wyoming K-12 school personnel reportedly feel they've been required to "teach to the test" for a number of years now. Our previous article documented how, overall, the state is not excelling at doing that though a few individual school districts scoring well and a handful are showing improvement. This article focuses on the improvement (or lack of ...

Wyoming K-12 schools have felt required to "teach to the test" for a number of years now. Wyoming Liberty Group wrote earlier about how the state overall has fallen short of success in spite of those efforts. Here we report on those shortcomings, and rare successes, by individual school districts. We use Wyoming's PAWS (Proficiency Assessments for ...

A number of our legislators claim we cannot cut education spending because we don't want to settle for mediocrity. Please see the graph below of 2016 ACT® results for states where 100 percent of 11th graders take the test (100% ACT states). From it, a disinterested observer could easily conclude that mediocrity is precisely what Wyoming has achieve...

What will it take to convince us our K-12 education system is not a success and needs to be held responsible for its failures? We recently got the latest 11-Grade ACT® scores from the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE). They show basically two-thirds of our kids failed to reach proficiency – just as in 2015-16. The press release of August 16 fro...

What do PAWS, NAEP & ACT® have in common besides being arcane acronyms? They are all K-12 education testing systems, each testing different age groups by subject, with the object of assessing what kids know and can do. They've also become canaries in the coal mine telling us our education systems and theories are dangerously ineffective. The fi...