The 2025 Montana legislature has officially come to an end. While there were some big disappointments, there are a lot of accomplishments to celebrate if you’re a fan of free markets, individual freedom, and limited government. From tech to housing to energy – we at Frontier Institute are proud to have played an instrumental role…
It’s official, we’ve reached the halfway point in Montana’s 2025 Legislative Session. This marks the point in which general bills must pass the floor of either the House or the Senate, or they are considered dead. The exceptions to this are Revenue bills, study resolutions and constitutional amendments, which have a later date in which…
Frontier Institute partnered with 50CAN and Edge Research on a new survey about the state of education opportunity in Montana. This survey provides a unique window into what parents understand to be the strengths and weaknesses of Montana’s education system, and how those views compare to parents across our region and across the country. Here…
Key Takeaways Montana education is mediocre and has been declining since at least 2011 on The Nation’s Report Card and other important achievement measures. Decades of focus on improving public school districts has not stopped this decline nor yielded results for Montana’s rising generation even with steady funding increases. The existing education establishment has not,…
Key Points Crypto, and blockchain technology more broadly, are rapidly disrupting major global industry sectors and leaders are recognizing the critical need for America to lead in Crypto innovation. Crypto industry adoption, growth, and investment in Montana will provide key benefits to the state economy and enable Montanans to achieve more independence and freedom from…
Key Points The signs of Montana education’s poor performance are both widespread and alarming. In our research, it is not evident that district school boards are raising alarms about declining performance or asserting local control. At least six major obstacles prevent school boards from providing effective oversight. In the absence of local control, state associations…
Key Points Classroom teachers hold the most important positions in Montana public schools because they are the ones educating students every day. Montana teachers experience persistent low pay and even layoffs despite public school funding steadily increasing the past 6+ years. Since 2017, administration costs for Montana public schools have increased by 4.7% while money…
Key Points Critical minerals are essential to modern technology and energy production, particularly for clean energy and semiconductors. Despite their importance to the global economy, the critical minerals supply chain faces major bottlenecks due to reliance on adversarial foreign nations with few environmental protections, in addition to significant barriers to utilizing our own domestic supply. …