Before we debate budgets, statutes, or court rulings, let us establish a basic truth that every Wyoming parent understands instinctively: a school exists to teach children substantive knowledge, and the ultimate responsibility for a child’s upbringing belongs to parents, not the government.
When you strip away institutional jargon, good education is remarkably simple: you cannot teach what you do not know.
When I attended St. Mary’s Catholic School in Cheyenne, our classrooms were led by nuns who were genuine masters of the subjects they taught. If a sister taught algebra, she held an advanced grasp of mathematics.
If she taught history, she knew the primary documents and the narrative of our civilization.
They did not spend years in university lecture halls collecting degrees in the theory of teaching; they spent their time mastering the substance of what they taught.
They walked into the classroom with authority, commanded respect, and delivered results because they knew their material.
In those days, St. Mary’s stood directly across the street on from the Capitol, and as a boy, I loved to walk across and wander the halls of state government.
During the era of Superintendent Velma Linford and Governor Jack Gage, all five statewide elected offices were housed right inside the State Capitol building.
The entire state government was lean, accessible, and tangible.
Curious citizens and schoolboys could walk in, find an office, and speak directly with the people accountable for making decisions.
The state education department was a modest office designed to assist local communities, not govern them from afar.
That memory stands in sharp contrast to today’s sprawling education apparatus, which has metastasized into a multi-layered bureaucracy mimicking the bloated federal Department of Education.
Under the influence of progressive theorists like John Dewey, teacher colleges shifted focus away from deep, discipline-specific scholarship and toward pedagogical theory, administrative compliance, and classroom process.
The consequences of prioritizing progressive theory over subject-matter depth are glaring on the global stage.
In Singapore, math teachers are required to hold advanced degrees in mathematics; in Finland, secondary educators hold master’s degrees in their specific academic disciplines.
Singapore routinely leads the world on international tests, while American students trail more than 100 points behind in mathematics, sitting in 27th place globally. We spend more money than almost anyone on earth, yet our children fall further behind.
Here in Wyoming, this systemic decline has been insulated and prolonged by our own state Supreme Court.
Starting thirty years ago with the activist Campbell decisions, the court decreed a rigid funding formula that treated education as a financial entitlement rather than an academic mission.
In its latest decision, the court majority doubled down on that overreach, improperly expanding strict scrutiny to micromanage overall school spending.
Yet amidst this overreach, Justice Kari Gray delivered a principled, text-focused dissent upholding the separation of powers.
Justice Gray rightly warned that having the judiciary function as an unelected account overseer serves no purpose and inappropriately injects the court into legislative and executive functions.
She reminded her colleagues that judicial intervention in legislative appropriations must be an absolute last resort, and that setting education policy and budgets belongs constitutionally to the people's elected lawmakers.
To all the families of our Wyoming: your hard work and mineral taxes fill the state treasury, but under this court-ordered monopoly, you have no say in how that money is used to educate your own children.
This broken status quo relies on politicians to protect it.
Representative Steve Harshman, who is running to become Wyoming’s next Superintendent of Public Instruction, is the consummate insider of this system.
It is no accident that Harshman received the statewide endorsement of WEA PACE, the political arm of the Wyoming Education Association.
Union endorsements are not given to reformers; they go to reliable guardians of the government monopoly who will fight to keep outside competition away.
Harshman’s record on school choice confirms this alliance.
When legislation like Education Savings Accounts (HB 0166) came forward to allow state education dollars to follow children to private schools or homeschool co-ops, the establishment pushed back to protect their captive funding.
If the courts and politicians succeed in killing school choice, the public-school monopoly will continue to fail our children.
That is why alternative paths to our sinking public schools are an urgent necessity.
Wyoming’s homeschooling families and independent schools prove every day that when parents are in charge and teachers focus on real subject matter, children thrive. Wyoming must break free from federal bureaucracy, court-ordered stagnation, and union control.
It is time to respect constitutional limits, empower parents with universal school choice, and give every Wyoming family the freedom to choose an education worthy of their children.
Fred Harrison can be reached at: Fred.Harrison@fjhlawoffice.com
