National School Choice Week in Wyoming

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

National School Choice Week is a charitable and non-partisan effort to raise awareness of effective K-12 education options. This year, it runs from January 23-29. According to its website, “Every child is unique, and all children learn differently. Some children might succeed at the neighborhood public school, while others might fit in better at a charter, magnet, online, private or home learning environment.”

Education is important to Wyoming. Our constitution requires that the legislature “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction embracing free elementary schools of every needed kind and grade” (Art. 7, Sec. 1). 

While much attention is focused on Wyoming’s 48 school districts and their 364 schools, we would do well to give greater attention to “schools of every needed kind and grade.” Children would benefit from greater choices. And budgetary difficulties could be eased by the competition that additional options provide.

One way of providing school choice is the “charter school.” These are publicly funded and publicly regulated but, unlike neighborhood schools, they must compete for students. When parental choice, rather than lines on a map, determine the student body, a school is more responsive to parental expectations and input. 

There are only five charter schools in Wyoming, concentrated in Cheyenne, Laramie, and Riverton. While these have proven helpful, many parents—and entire regions of the state are frozen out of this beneficial choice. Magnet schools have more direct oversight from the county school boards, but are otherwise similar. However, there are zero magnet schools in Wyoming.

Online learning is another way of empowering school choice. It provides computer-based learning modules that parents and students can use in the privacy of the home. This allows parents to be much more involved in monitoring curriculum and tutoring for success. It can also serve to mitigate some of the most toxic social dynamics of the school environment.

While the legislature seeks to expand school choice to benefit the public, it should not overlook the important role that private schools can play. Education is more than about reading, writing and arithmetic. Education is about morality. Under the heading of Education, Wyoming’s Constitution specifies that it is the “Duty of [the] legislature to protect and promote health and morality of people.” This is “essential… to the peace and permanence of the state” (Art. 7, Sec. 20).

All education is inherently religious. But the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the state from setting up one religion over another, and the Free Exercise Clause prohibits the state from regulating a religious school. State educators, in the best case, are reluctant to speak of God at all. In the worst cases, they may denigrate God before impressionable students. Either way, the constitutional and essential duty to promote morality is hobbled.

Therefore, Wyoming’s 30 private schools are better situated to serve the public in this capacity than anything that the state can do directly. They can freely speak of God who, according to the Declaration of Independence, creates all men equal. Homeschooling, too, allows open discussion of God in the classroom. Moreover, it boasts the longest history, and the greatest parental involvement of any other sort of school choice. 

Churches unable to establish a private school can still serve parents by enhancing educational choice. They can offer their buildings as a space for homeschoolers to gather and enlist non-parent volunteers for assistance. Such creative initiatives can encourage parents who are otherwise intimidated at the prospect of homeschooling. Cooperative learning environments like these can utilize the expertise of young parents and retirees who have much to offer to the next generation.

Legislative support for private schools and homeschools is tricky but should not be neglected. Money is power. Tax dollars taken from parents and given exclusively to schools that they have not chosen violates the spirit of the First Amendment. Every dollar given to a school that never mentions God is a tacit Establishment of a godless religion. And every dollar taken from parents who want a religious education for their children inhibits the freedom to exercise their religion.

The courts are beginning to see this inequity and to remedy the injustice. In a 2020 landmark case, the Supreme Court (Espinoza v. Montana) effectively struck down “Blaine Amendments.” These laws restrict education funding to religious schools and unconstitutionally discriminate against certain religions. Since Wyoming’s own Constitution contains one of these provisions (Art. 7, Sec. 12), our legislature should rethink funding models accordingly.

National School Choice Week is an opportunity to have a serious conversation about Wyoming’s Constitutional commitments to education. Parents wrote and ratified the Constitution for their children. Expanding educational choices will uphold Wyoming’s constitution and strengthen the state by strengthening the family. 

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, January 21, 2022.