Sen. Charles Scott got quite a shock while perusing Wyoming’s most recent school recalibration report, the Casper Republican told his colleagues on the Joint Education Committee. The report, which analyzes education and potential changes to the state’s school funding model, included grim warnings about literacy, Scott said.
The consultants’ “report said very bluntly that we were not getting our money’s worth from our K-12 system, and they pointed very specifically to the results of third and fourth grade on the state assessment test,” he said. The report concluded that the students who test below-proficiency in certain literacy areas “would not be able to function as adults in our modern high-tech economy. That is a horrible indictment of our system.”
Though he believes Wyoming school districts do an excellent job for the kids who are learning how to read, he said, “we are still leaving way too many kids behind.”
Senate File 179, “Fixing reading failure,” represents Scott’s attempt to turn the trend around. The bill shores up Wyoming’s current literacy statute by erecting stricter guardrails. It creates more detailed policies for identifying struggling readers and creating individualized plans for them, puts more emphasis on holding such kids back a grade and includes penalties for districts that fail to follow the identification or implementation protocols.
Though the lawmakers and education experts who testified on the bill agreed the issue is desperately in need of attention, there was disagreement over whether SF 179 is the right solution. Many argued it isn’t, and asked the committee to table the bill and come back to the subject once the session is over for careful study.
“This isn’t ready for prime time,” said Tate Mullen, government relations director for the Wyoming Education Association. “This is something we need to take up in the interim so that experts can be in the room.”
Those arguments did not sway the majority of the committee, which voted 3-2 on Wednesday to advance the bill.
“I just think the issue that we’re facing is so detrimental to our education system that it needs to be addressed,” said Sen. Jared Olsen, R-Cheyenne. “I’m too hesitant to wait for another interim to pass entirely until we do something about it.”
What’s in it
The conversation unfolded just weeks after the Wyoming Department of Education released the state’s 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. While Wyoming students’ scores remain above national averages on the assessment, known as the Nation’s Report Card, they continued a five-year slide in both math and reading.
In 2024, 36% of Wyoming fourth graders scored at or above proficiency in reading on NAEP — six percentage points higher than the U.S. average and down from 41% in 2017. Eighth graders did not fare as well, with 29% scoring at or above proficiency in reading — the same as the national average and down from 38% in 2017.
The state test Scott referred to, meanwhile, is the Wyoming Test of Proficiency and Progress — commonly called WY-TOPP. The system of assessments measures students against Wyoming’s performance standards.
Wyoming’s 2023-24 results were relatively stable compared to the previous year but remained below pre-pandemic levels. Student proficiency decreased by 0.2% in English Language Arts compared to the previous year, according to the Wyoming Department of Education.
District results vary widely, Scott noted — some districts have 70% or more students in proficient or advanced categories, others with only 30% in those categories and even a few with 10% in those categories. In examining the spectrum, proficiency success appears to have more correlated with district management and staff performance than demographics or funding, he said.
As originally drafted, the 26-page bill would categorize Wyoming districts as either high-performing in reading instruction or not, and then set out literacy protocols for each with a more rigorous program for the latter. It lays out specifics for identifying struggling students and pushes parental involvement in mapping out an individual plan for them. It also identifies instances where students would be “retained,” or held back a grade. And it includes a provision for giving the parents the ability to sue for up to $10,000 if they aren’t notified of their student’s struggles, a plan is not developed to address them or a plan is not implemented.
Scott’s bill first came up for discussion when the committee met Monday. However, Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder asked the panel to table it, urging the more comprehensive approach of a Wyoming statute rewrite.
“While I appreciate the bringer’s attention to literacy,” she said, “I think that if we really want to address literacy reform, that the bill before us today doesn’t quite get us there.”
Degenfelder brought with her language that she developed that would achieve that rewrite. The committee decided to revisit the issue.
When it reconvened Wednesday morning, Scott reported that he had incorporated much of Degenfelder’s language into the bill via an amendment. “It doesn’t change the fundamentals of the bill, but it does put considerable enhancement in it,” he said.
That includes more specifics and detail on the kind of instruments used to identify reading difficulties and address them. The measure still contained pathways to grade retention and the ability for parents’ legal recourse.
What they said
Those provisions — holding kids back a grade and allowing parents to sue school districts — were among parts of the bill that raised concerns.
There are academic strategies that are more cost effective and less harmful than the ones in the bill, Mullen with the WEA said. Decades of research into grade retention, for example, “has shown that retention is an ineffective means at bolstering student performance” and has negative consequences like higher dropout rates later.
Mandatory retention “seems a little counter to the discussions we’ve had about parental rights,” while the legal damages piece “seems very heavy handed,” Mullen continued.
Many people in the education field who testified echoed the sentiment that while the bill contained some good, too many concerns remained.
“This is a topic that it’s important we get correct,” said Carbon County School District 1 Superintendent Mark Hamel, who supported tabling the bill and addressing it in the interim.
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, was in favor of that. Wyoming has many experts and stakeholders at its disposal and should consult them, he said.
“It’s too important to just wing it,” he said. “The idea that we just move something along as complicated as this that doesn’t have researched-based solutions is worse than doing nothing.”
Sen. Olsen proposed an amendment to delete the monetary damages language, which passed.
The committee ultimately passed Scott’s amended bill, with Rothfuss and Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, voting against it.
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