by Stephen Klein There were a number of developments at this week's interim meeting of the Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions committee of the Wyoming Legislature. Several draft bills suggest potential amendments to Wyoming's campaign finance laws; some of proposals are good, and some of them are not. I am encouraged that members of...

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...

Wyoming Liberty Group attended the July 25 meeting of the legislature's Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration. It was interesting to see how much of a closed loop the process will be. The consultants engaged to do the work exclusively define interested stakeholders as elected government officials and employees plus employees of and lobby...

Certain Wyoming legislators want our schools to compare favorably with the best schools in the country. Before we compare ourselves to the Joneses, though, we need to get our heads out of the sand and look honestly at how poorly we performed against our own state benchmark as measured by the testing system Wyoming's experts chose, "PAWS". We note t...

Listen in as Robert Nelson discusses the recent release of the Wyoming education PAWS testing results with host Glenn Woods. 

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 ineffective. See the four graphs...

by Stephen Klein A group called Wyoming Promise has declared the dastardly goal of overturning the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and to open the doors to campaign finance "reform," or regulating free speech by restricting the money used to pay for it. Wyoming Promise aims to accomplish this by gatheri...

We recently overheard an opinion that Washington D.C.'s K-12 schools have had the greatest improvement in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores of any jurisdiction in the U.S. in recent years. We've also heard Wyoming legislators heap praises on Wyoming's school system for its improved NAEP scores. Let's compare them, shall we? ...

Bob Nelson talks with Glenn Woods about Wyoming school staffing. 

On March 17th staff member Robert Nelson had the opportunity to sit down with KGAB host Glenn Woods. They discussed topics based on education such as Wyoming's education budget and the upcoming work of the recalibration committee. They also discussed the recent legislative session and it's most engaged legislators. 

Here is a question often heard since the extent of Wyoming's K-12 funding shortfall has become widely discussed; "Is Wyoming education top-heavy with administrative staff?" The short answer would appear to be yes.  Graph 1 uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) from fall 2013 (the most recent available) in two separ...

Popular Wyoming radio host Glenn Woods has recently joined KGAB radio here in Cheyenne. CEO Jonathan Downing sat down with Glenn on Friday March 3. They discussed a variety of topics including a post-session rundown. Click play now to listen to this great conversation! 

Ever wonder what it's like to testify in front of a committee? Watch as our very own Robert Nelson testified to the Wyoming House Education committee last January. 

Bob Nelson chats with Doug Randall on KGAB 650 AM about 2017 school legislation.

by Anthony Vibbard There are four main approaches to administering criminal justice; 1) Deterrence, 2) Restraint, 3) Retribution, and 4) Rehabilitation. Every criminal justice system uses some combination but over the years, trial and error throughout the 50 states has called into question the effectiveness of each. Making sure Wyoming's focus is o...

Boyd Wiggam and Gary Freeman discuss opportunities for state and local governments to expand economic opportunity and limit taxation including "Special Districts" reform legislation, the Transportation Network Companies bill, and a local government's Fight the Blight Task Force.