Zooming In on Baltimore City Schools with Christopher Papst

Chris Papst, an investigative reporter from Fox 45 News, discusses his eight-year investigation into Baltimore City Public Schools. Despite being one of the most funded school systems, it ranks among the lowest performing. Papst's book, "Failure Factory," reveals systemic issues, including grade-changing practices that led to 12,542 failing grades being changed to passing over four years. He highlights a 30% funding increase over eight years without hiring additional teachers. Papst emphasizes the need for accountability, better educational policies, and community involvement to address these systemic failures.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Welcome to the Teacher Ads Podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever-changing, and I hope with each season you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the seventh season of the Teacher Ads, and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy the Teacher Ads, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. I'm happy to share that the career mentorship program Major Choice is now sponsoring the Teacher Ads Podcast. I'm thrilled about the partnership. You can learn more about becoming a mentor at majorchoice.com slash mentor. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

My name is Chris Pabst. I'm an investigative reporter. I work for Fox 45 News in Baltimore. And I work on a team called Project Baltimore. And what Project Baltimore is, is we are a team of five. There's two photographer editors, two producers, and myself as a reporter. And we launched in January of 2017. And the whole concept of what we do, and this was really a concept that was developed by our parent company, which is Sinclair Broadcast Group, was to have a team of people working on one topic. And we are five journalists that are devoted to one topic. And in January of 2017, the topic that we chose was public education. And for nine years, we're now nine years and one month later. Wow. We are still doing public education. So we're still doing the same topic every single day. Our professional lives are devoted to this. And the reason that we chose public education was because back in January of 2017, we could see through federal data that Baltimore City Public Schools was one of the most funded large school systems in America, but is also one of the lowest performing large school systems in America. And in January of 2017, the question that we asked was why? Why is this happening? Why is this more importantly allowed to happen? Why is it accepted? And eight years later, in late 2025, I released Failure Factory, my book, uh Failure Factory, How Baltimore City Public Schools Deprive Taxpayers and Students of a Future. Because after eight years, it is still one of the highest funded large school systems in America and still one of the lowest performing. And the question that we were asking in 2017 of why, why is this happening? Why is this allowed to happen? I wrote Failure Factory after eight years because I think that we have uh found the answers to those questions.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Well, wow, this is heavy.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

After all these years. So when you first what went in, what did you think you were going to find? And then how did that change as you were investigating through the years?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

So when I I was an investigative reporter for the ABC News Affiliate in Washington, D.C. And I had developed a fairly good reputation as an investigative reporter. And when I came to Baltimore, I didn't know anybody. Uh, it was a brand new town for me, which by the way, journalistically, I think really benefited me because I I didn't have any preconceived notions about this area. I came in with really fresh eyes. And what people had said to me was if, and these are people that are administrators and teachers, and and you know, we can get to that later on. And all these interviews are in the book. And what they had said to me is that if you're really going to investigate Baltimore City public schools, what you are going to find is that the school system is no longer prioritizing the education of students. It's prioritizing the acquisition of funding. And that was really hard for me to hear because my dad was a public school teacher for 35 years in Pennsylvania. He was in the teachers' union. You know, I grew up in that household. Uh, I went to public school K K through 12, and so did my brother. And to hear somebody say that to me, I just I didn't believe it. Eight years later, I wrote this book because after doing this every single day for eight years, I do now believe that that it's true. And if people were to read the book, I don't even want you to take my word for it. I'm a journalist. I'm not telling you something, I'm showing you something. And I'm taking the data of Baltimore City Public Schools, uh, the Maryland State Department of Education, National Assessment of Educational Progress, and I'm taking all of these data sources and I'm I'm combining all of them and putting them into one place. And I'm showing you where the school system is spending its money, how it's spending its money, and also in the teacher interviews that I do, the lack of control that teachers feel or feel that they have in their classrooms, and the amount of the lack of discipline for many of the students and how the teachers aren't allowed to discipline anymore. And they they send a kid to the principal's office, and the next period they're right back in. And it it's all of these things together and the testimonies from a lot of administrators I talked to as well in the book. I think it really does lead you to say that the priority is not to educate the kids, the priority is to benefit the adults. And I know that's hard to hear. It was very difficult for me to hear in January of 2017, so much in fact that I dismissed it. But I I do believe eight years later that it's true.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

So day to day, because you said you were reporting on this every day. Every day. I still do today. So day to day, you're finding teachers, administration, staff, et cetera, to interview your like what's your process and how do you decide where you want to go next in your deductive reasoning of where the good information will be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

So when when we started, we started in January of 2017, and that's when Failure Factory begins, in January of 2017. And the very the big the first big story that we did, the one that that the first viral story reproduced was in January of 2017, or I'm sorry, like later 2017. I think it was like in May. Okay. And what I did was as a as an investigative journalist working in a town that I had never been in before, I did what investigative journalists do, which is acquire data and try to look through the data and look for outliers. So there's about 165 schools in Baltimore City, 165 public schools. And I acquired the state testing data for all of them. And it took me 40 hours to do this. Wow. And I and I looked through all the data for every school, and what I found was that there were six schools in Baltimore City that did not have a single student test proficient in any subject. So hundreds of kids, six entire schools, not one kid tested proficient on a state test. So we broke that story, it went viral. And I had a bunch of teachers that were reaching out to me from the school system after they saw that story. And they were saying, No, you're right. Like this data's real. The school system doesn't want people to know that, but the data's real. But you do realize that a lot of these kids are still graduating. And I would write them back and I would say, Well, how are they graduating if they're not proficient in anything? And the teachers would say to me, Well, my grades are being changed. And I'm like, What do you what do you mean they're being changed? And they gave me transcripts of kids where a kid would fail Spanish, for example, which is a class that you have to pass in Maryland in order to graduate. And the I interviewed a teacher in this book who had, she was a Spanish teacher, had her grades changed and kids graduated. And what's happening is that the administrators, not the teachers, the administrators, are going into the grade books in Baltimore City and changing grades. Stop it. That is what so I had more and more teachers that were coming to me. And throughout 2017, we were producing a lot of stories talking to different teachers. And in Failure Factory, I have two of these specific teachers, the transcripts from the interviews that you can read. And in November of 2017, I filed a public records request with Baltimore City Public Schools. And in the public records request, I asked for documents, emails, internal investigations related to grade changing. Well, Baltimore City Public Schools gave me nothing. And they said, we're not going to give you anything, which I know is illegal. So in December of 2017, we sued Baltimore City Public Schools for violating uh the Maryland Public Information Act. In February of 2019, it went to court. And I testified for a couple hours in front of a circuit court judge, Jeannie Hong in Baltimore City. And in March, she ruled that Baltimore City schools willfully and knowingly viol law by not handing over the documents that we requested. What the judge said was that she believed, and these are her words and her rulings in here, she believed that the school system knew it was breaking the law, but did it anyway to hide possible wrongdoing. And she forced the school system to pay$200,000 of our legal fees because this never should have gone to court. And then she forced the school system to hand over all the documents and more that we requested. So what were in the documents? And the reason that I'm reason this is an answer to your question is because five years of this book is this storyline of first breaking the story about the six schools, having teachers come to us, having to sue the school system. And then throughout all of this, we're interviewing the parents whose kids are having their grades changed, and now they're matriculating through the school without getting the education they need. So that's that's that's why this answer, that's why this is the answer to your question. Yeah. So we start getting the documents from Baltimore City Public Schools. We got 8,000 emails. And the emails are in Failure Factory, and these are teachers that are writing their administrators saying to them, please stop going into my grade book and changing my grade. Please, the kid did not do any additional work. Why are they graduating? I failed this student. Why did this student move on to the next grade? 8,000 emails. Now, not all of them were that, but many of them were that. And then to conclude this part of the story is that after we after we sued the school system and we won, uh the Maryland Inspector General for Education opened his own investigation. And that was released in 2022. So that's the five years. We started in 2017, and then the Inspector General for Education's report comes out five years later. And what he found was over a four-year period in Baltimore City Public Schools, there were 12,542 failing grades changed to passing for students that didn't do any additional work and didn't deserve it. And what the inspector general found was upwards of 10% of the students in some Baltimore City schools were graduating and did not earn it. Their grades were being changed. 12,542. This is not a B change to this is not grade inflation. This is not a B to an A or C to a B. This is a failing grade to a D or a D minus with the intent to pass students who don't deserve to pass.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Because they want their numbers to show that their graduate their graduation numbers to look okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah, they want their graduation numbers and their passing numbers to look good. But more importantly, they want the funding to continue to come in because schools are funded based on enrollment. So in Maryland, a school's funding is based on the number of students that they have enrolled. And if a student continues to pass, that student is more likely to stay enrolled because they see the end, they see a diploma in their future. Now, I interview teachers in this book who tell me that they have graduated kids who cannot read the diploma that is given to them. So how does that happen? It happens because grades are being changed, and the school system is pushing kids through and matriculating them before they have mastered the material in the grade that they're in. We know this is this is this is documented. The Maryland State Invest Inspector General for Education has documented this with a state report that this is happening. And it was caused by Project Baltimore's reporting that is in Failure Factory. This is this is happening. This is not a conspiracy. Wow. This is this is this is a fact. It is happening.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

And it's only in Baltimore City. Like it's not the entire state. It was just this one district.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

So that that specific investigation by the inspector general was in one specific school system, which is Baltimore City.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

And I'm going to ask, and you might not be able to give me facts, but do you feel that that's the only school system that's doing this?

SPEAKER_00 15:21

No, no. And the reason that I wrote Failure Factory is because I don't believe this happens in every school system in America, but I certain believe that it happens in many school systems in America. And really what Failure Factory is doing is it's trying to educate people about what it what is happening in many public schools around America. And this is what's happening. So if you if you look at the data of Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore City graduates about 70% of its students. Four-year graduation rate is about 70%, which is the lowest in the state of Maryland. And that doesn't change. It was 70% in 2017 when Project Baltimore began. And it's 70% in 2024, which uh is the 2025, which is the year that that the book ends, those eight school years. So it's 70%. The math proficiency rate is 10. So 90% of the kids in Baltimore City throughout the entire school system that take the state math exam are not proficient. So a lot of the questions that we had going into this, and it was the same in 2017. That hasn't changed either. So the question that we had going into this is how how does that make sense? How can you have 70% of your kids are graduating, but 10% of your kids are proficient in math? That is quite the difference. And the answer goes back to grade change.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Sorry, I'm just in shock. I'm just in shock by this information. It's horrible.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

It is shocking. And it's, you know, in 2017, if somebody would have told me I'd be sitting here with you right now talking about this, I wouldn't have believed it. Much like when the person said to me, the priority is not educating kids, the priority is acquiring funding. I'm not saying they don't educate kids. I'm saying the priority is acquiring the funding. I, you know, I wouldn't have thought that I would be here right now, but this is this is where we are. And that's why I'm very passionate about this because people need to know. Because a failing public education system fails society. We can't we can't allow that to happen.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

So are you working towards in your investigations how to fix the problem? Are there things being done in that conversation?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Of course. So I have I have an entire chapter in Failure Factory devoted to what's working. And there are schools in Baltimore City that are getting the same per pupil funding, that are pulling students from the same neighborhoods that are showing great success. And there are examples of this. And I go to the schools and I take readers to the schools and I interview the principal and the parents and the kids and the teachers, and I show what they're doing. But it just doesn't seem like the rest of the school system looks at these shining examples and wants to emulate them. And that's something that's really confusing to me. And a lot of times I get I get the question, what's the what's the answer? And the way that I answer that is that I say that it's twofold. There's policy and there's politics. The policy is what's happening inside of the school system. And the people that I go to to answer for answers, it's not the administrators, it's not the CEO or the superintendent, it's the teachers. It's the boots on the ground, the people in the classroom with the kids. And the answers are simple. You got to get disruptive kids out of the classroom. The kids have to understand there's accountability for their actions, and you have to raise the level of expectation. And when when adults tell when the adults continue to lower the expectation, kids feel that. Yeah. If they don't think that you believe that they can do it, they're not going to do it. But I have my own kids. My kids are in public school. I understand. I'm in these public schools. I'm not just in public schools because it's my job. I'm in public schools because I'm a dad. Yeah. And I want my kids to be in public school. I I want that environment for them. And the kids are going to achieve the level that the adults set for them. And it's it's not complicated. You gotta, you gotta get the problematic kids out of the classroom. That that's that's number one. And the schools don't want to do that again, because it goes back to funding. Okay. Um, and and the disciplinary action, you got to discipline kids. You know, I'm not saying that you go back 50 years ago, the kids just need to know that their actions have consequences. Yeah. And the other the other part of it here is is the political aspect of it. And the political aspect is when we do these stories, like when we did the six schools with no kids proficient in anything in Baltimore City, when I said that story went viral, it did. And but it went viral outside of Baltimore. Yeah. Inside of Baltimore, the public officials and the elected officials in the city said nothing. And that's a big problem. If if you're gonna fix the public school system, there has to be public officials that aren't just gonna give the school system more money every year and walk away. They're gonna give the school system more money and then they're gonna say, listen, we expect you to do a better job educating the kids. If you want this money, here it is. The best place we can put money is public education. Most people agree with that. But it has to have some string attached that you got to improve the quality of education in your school system. And that improving the quality of education is is what's not happening in a city like Baltimore with the public officials.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

So have you investigated, I'm sure you have. So where does that money go?

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Well, here's something you'll find interesting. So in in 2017, Baltimore City had a$1.3 billion budget. 2024, those is eight school years, because you got to count 2017 as the first school year. Eight school years later, uh, it had a$1.7 billion budget. So they got$400 million additional dollars, about a 30% increase in funding. Now, the numbers I'm gonna give you right now are from the Maryland State Department of Education. They're in this book, you'll see it for yourself. In 2017, Baltimore City Schools had 5,149 teachers. 5,149. Okay. In 2024, they had 5,149. The school system got 400 million additional dollars a year. They hired 1,300 additional employees. None were teachers. So let's go back to what we talked about earlier in your podcast when that person came to me in 2017 and said, what you're gonna find is that the priority is not educating kids, the priority is acquiring funding. And that number that I just gave you, the school system acquired 400 million more dollars a year and did not hire any additional teachers, tells you a lot about what they're prioritizing based on where they're putting their money.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Again, complete shock.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

It's a failure fact.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

It's not a good look.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Is it all cities, do you think? Well, I I'm not gonna say it's I can't generalize to the point where it's all cities. Yeah. I can't generalize to the point where it's all urban areas. But what I can say is that as I've been doing the book tour, book came out a couple months ago. I'm hearing from people all around the country that are saying the same thing is happening in their areas. And and really what I do in Failure Factory is I take a good chunk a chunk of the book because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to educate people on what to look for in your school system. These are school board policies that you should look for, because if you see these in your school system, it's a problem. It's a sign that the academics are slipping and the school system is trying to pass more kids without necessarily educating those kids. So I'm really trying to let people know, as someone who does this every day, what I look for to determine if a school is successful. Because, you know, while everybody else is going to work 40 and 50 hours a week feeding their families, I'm doing this. So I'm trying to impart that knowledge on people. And what I've noticed is a lot of the school systems around Baltimore. Are starting to adopt similar concepts, educational concepts to Baltimore. Baltimore's just at a later stage of doing this. And I'm we're seeing it spread. We're seeing it spread in real time. And what I mean by that is we're seeing policies that have existed in Baltimore for years starting to get adopted by the outlying counties in the urban and rural areas. And it all goes back to the concept of passing the kids without educating the kids.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

So you're saying the money, I'm still trying to get my brain around this. So does the money go towards programs within the school? Does it go towards the superintendent's pocket? Does it go towards, you know, having coordinators for math and science and, you know, more support coordinator type people? Like where does that money go?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Like, do you have like a breakdown of that? Sure. A lot of it goes to the administration aspect of it. So if you in the book, I from the eighth, I have a chart in the book that goes over all eight school years that Failure Factory covers. And I think what makes this book a lot different than other educational books is that it's a long-term study. This is not two or three years. This is eight years. So kids that started this book in fourth grade are now graduated. So it's a it's a huge chunk of their education.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

And I go through all eight years and I show you all the money that's coming in, where that money was allocated. Yeah. And at the same time, I'm showing you the student academic outcomes, SAT scores, graduation rates, dropout rates, chronic absenteeism. And you can track how many of those metrics are getting worse or just staying about the same as the amount of funding is skyrocketing. And you can see who's getting the raises. The teachers in Baltimore City got the smallest percent pay raise from 2017 to 2024. The director level positions, the assistant superintendents, the principals, they're getting percentage-wise, which also turns out to be money-wise because they make more money, the highest pay raises. Again, not the money getting to the classroom, not the prioritizing of the educating of the kids. And it's not just the percent increase they're getting. We talked earlier that Baltimore City didn't hire any additional teachers over eight years. But what they hired were the director level positions and people in the C-suite, people in central office. The numbers are the numbers are right there. Yeah. They're all there in the Maryland State Department of Education. The problem is that people that are working 40 and 50 hours a week don't have time to go look it up. I do. So I'm taking that data, putting it in this book, putting it into failure factor and saying, hey, this is probably very similar to what's happening in your school system. Here's how you find that data.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

So, but the full-on corrupt that you're talking about, the full-on corrupt changing grades, it's just a slap on the wrist and a fine. Does anybody go to jail for that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Nope. Not not one person. I'll I'll give you a couple of examples of individuals that I had done stories on. There was a school that the actual book opens with me to school called Calverton in 2017, Calverton Elementary Middle. And they had a principal, uh, Martya Cooper, and I had a text that she sent to all of her teachers. And I interviewed one of the teachers who gave me the text. And the text is in the book. You can see it for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

It was a text to all the phones. And it said in the text, if you have any students with failing grades, change them to passing. That's what it said. And it said, change them to a 60, which is a minimum passing grade of a D minus. So that this teacher comes to me and the teacher shows me the text. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, Is it is it that brazen? Like is that out in the open? And the teacher goes, Yeah. So I I interview the teacher. Her transcript is in Failure Factory of everything that she said and how her school is operating. So we do this story, and Baltimore City Public Schools does an internal investigation. Their internal investigation reveals that, yes, the principal improperly changed many failing grades to passing and promoted kids that did not deserve to be promoted. She kept her job, making about$150,000 a year. Now, this is also a city, Baltimore City, where 20 to 25% of the people live in poverty. And there are homes that are for sale for$25,000. So$150,000 in Baltimore City is not like$150,000 in Boston. Like it is, it is a lot of money. And for principals or anybody really to be making that money when you compare how the citizenry is living, it is really an astronomical amount. But that principal, Martia Cooper, she's in this book, kept her job.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

So, you know, is part of your investigation to try to be like changing the laws and get these people.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

So a lot of work that we have done have has changed laws in the schools. A lot of it has to do with safety, though. Like we we expose certain things, safety-oriented, and the state changed laws. When when we when we sued Baltimore City Public Schools and won, that set legal precedent throughout the entire state on how you can challenge violations of the Maryland Public Information Act. When we did the grade changing investigation, the five-year grade changing investigation, Baltimore City Schools rewrote its entire grading policy. And actually they rewrote it twice because the first time they rewrote it, it didn't work and people were still changing grades. And we reported that and exposed it. And then the second time they rewrote it, uh, it they they rewrote everything. So now there's like systems in place where, in order for a grade to be changed in Baltimore City now, there has to be a written signature by the teacher. And the administrator has to get approval from the teacher. Things that probably should that should have been in place a long time ago that weren't, and they were being abused. And there's there's been a lot of things like that that have changed that have been very beneficial as far as policy and law. But the student outcomes, they're the same or getting worse. And there's nothing I, as a journalist, can do that except for a report on it and show people and tell people how their money is not resulting in better educational outcomes. But the only way that's gonna happen has to come from the community. The community has to demand it by voting for politicians that are not just going to give the school system money and turn their backs. They're gonna give the school system the money and then they're gonna hold the school system accountable. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Just to go back real quick before we wrap up, um, you mentioned getting the students who act up, the behavior students. Uh are you talking like mostly at high school level? Like what what is there a certain grade level where you see more issues with the behaviors that are stopping learning?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

No, no, I mean in Baltimore we're hearing it from K all the way through 12. Okay. Now, obviously, when you get into the later grades, it's it's more of a problem because physically the kids are are are larger. Yeah. But it the biggest problem that we hear about is violence and bullying. And we interview teachers in the book that have been diagnosed with PTSD, that they're now on disability because of the violence in the schools. I mean, Baltimore is a very violent place. If if I mean every year, Baltimore is named one of the most violent, deadliest cities, not just in America, but in the Western Hemisphere. And that violence doesn't necessarily stop when you get to the schoolhouse. But largely what Failure Factory is contending is that when you look at stuff like that, oftentimes the violence is the symptom. The problem is something else. And I know that this is this is a this is a whole nother podcast, and I and I understand that. However, what I would contend is that the lack of education that so many kids in Baltimore City are getting and have not been getting for years is contributing greatly to that violence because these kids simply do not have the skills when they graduate to enter the workforce and be effective. If you're graduating 70% of your kids, and we know only 10% of those kids are proficient in math, what kind of job are they going to get when they when they leave high school? And it's a question that we know the answer to. We know the answer to that question.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

It's it's so upsetting. I mean, how do you do this day in and day out and not just I don't know. It's it's upsetting to have to see this going on.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

It's very upsetting. I think that when you read the book, like you'll you'll see how my my pendulum is swinging, right? Like, you know, my pendulum's over here, and and you see how, you know, story by story, it just starts, it just starts to swing to the other side to where I am right now.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

And what's frustrating for me is that I know I'm from a little town in southeastern Pennsylvania, a little farm town. And I know that where I'm from, if my local elementary school did not have any students test proficient in any subject, that's pitchfork time. And the parents would be at that school board meeting. That's so true. Yes. Superintendent, you got to go. Principal, you're gone. Assistant principal, you're gone. But in Baltimore, that doesn't happen. The opposite happens. It seems like the more failure there is, the more circling of the wagons there is from the public officials in the city. Yeah. And it's really difficult to wrap your head around because you see the effects that it's happening, and you see the crime and the poverty and the lack of economic opportunities in Baltimore City. You see a city that used to have nearly a million people. Now it's down to 550,000 and shrinking almost every year. It's gonna be under it's gonna be under 500,000 soon. You know, a hundred years. So I start the book with a a little statistic. Baltimore had a higher population in 1920 than it did in 2020. So in the US Census, more people lived in Baltimore in 1920 than 2020. So in a hundred years, the schools, the the the city went backwards. Yeah. And it's largely, I contend, because of the school system. Because when people have kids, they move out. And also when you're undereducating your populace, it's leading to many of the other social problems that we're having. And I just it's really difficult for me to understand how the public officials in the city aren't holding those pitchforks, but they're not. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

I still call me naive. I still can't imagine that they're only doing this because of money. There's not any other incentive or motive for them doing this and allowing this to happen. It's all about money.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Politicians aren't getting money from the school system. Uh the people in the school system are getting the money. Yeah. From a political standpoint, uh here's my here's my hypothesis. This is what I think. Yeah. I think that if you are a politician in Baltimore, you want to grow your political status, you don't do that by criticizing the school system. And this book is not is not a political book. I don't talk about Republicans, I don't talk about Democrats, I don't talk about liberals and conservatives. I don't want anybody reading this book with that lens. I just want you looking at the numbers, listening to the testimony from the parents and the students and the teachers, and drawing your own conclusions. But a fact is a fact. And a fact is that Baltimore City is a one-party city. And there has not been a Republican elected the city council since the 1930s, and there has not been a Republican elected mayor since the 1960s. It is 100% one-party control. And my s I am not contending that Republicans have all the answers. I do not believe that's true. But what I am contending is that two-party control is better than one-party rule. And in ball in Baltimore City, what you have is one-party rule. And if you want to move up in that party, you can't criticize the school system because that one party created the school system and has run that school system for a very long time. And I think that is why the politicians in the city won't speak out against the school system. Because they essentially would be speaking out against their own political party. Wow. Well, and the Republicans do it too. They just do it in other parts of the country. Yeah. And that's why I'm saying that the two-party control, actually, I think a third party would be better, but that's whole that's a whole nother different podcast. But at least if there's two parties, there are some checks and balances that are in place. Yeah. But when there's one party.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Well, I I have to thank you. I am not an investigative journalist and I probably missed some really great questions. But I think the bottom line is everybody listening, get failure factory, because this sounds like a book that is really, really important for education for years to come, obviously. And, you know, that way you can evaluate your own district and see, wait a minute, is something going on, you know. So really, really, uh, I really appreciate your time and for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Thank you so much. I I really appreciate it. And and if people do pick up the book, you can get it anywhere books are sold. You know, if you read it, contact me. Um, I'm really easy to get a hold of just Chris Papst on X, Chris Papst on Facebook, Chris Paps.com, C-H-R-I-S-P-A-P-S-T. Let's continue the conversation because I I wrote this book because I I want to have the conversation like you and I are having right now. Yeah. Because we we are public schools, 90% of our kids in this country go to public schools. And we have to demand more from them. We have to improve them. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.teteachure.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram at Melissa B. Milner, and I hope you check out the Teacher As Facebook page for episode updates. This podcast is sponsored by the Career Mentorship Program Major Choice. You can learn more about becoming a mentor at majorchoice.comslash mentor. Thanks for listening, and that's a wrap.