Senate Bill Will Fund Teachers, Reduce Administrative Costs
March 24, 2021
Casper Star Tribune
By Senator Charles Scott, Chairman of the Senate Education Committee
The Wyoming Legislature faces the difficult task this session of correcting a large and growing structural deficit in our K-12 education system. Without legislative action, our schools will require $250 million of stopgap funding from the state’s “rainy day” fund annually to backfill the revenue shortfall, which is not sustainable.
That’s a big hole to fill. But it owes largely to significant growth in spending, for which Wyoming has not reaped the benefits. We have experienced diminishing returns on our investment in K-12 education, where more money has not produced better outcomes.
Beginning in 1995, following the Campbell Supreme Court ruling, Wyoming began ramping up funding in our K-12 education system. In FY 1996 state and local education funding totaled just above $516 million, or $5,168 per student. By 2019, that figure had grown to $1.485 billion, or $15,966 per student—a more than three-fold increase per student, and a 288 percent growth in dollar value.
Yet, our schools’ performance has not grown reciprocally—not by a long shot. Wyoming’s scores on the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is regarded as the “nation’s report card,” have improved only marginally over the past more than two decades.