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Blue Dot
Failure Factory: What Baltimore Schools Can Teach Us About Public Education Nationwide
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In this episode of The Blue Dot Podcast, hosts Natalie MacDonald and Brian Koehl examine the state of public education through a national lens, reviewing systemic failures uncovered in Baltimore City Public Schools. Joined by Emmy‑winning investigative journalist Chris Papst, author of Failure Factory, the conversation explores school funding, accountability, data manipulation, and the long‑term impact of education policy on communities. They explore data, legal battles, and solutions to improve education quality nationwide. The episode also highlights the case for universal Pre‑K and ends with a call to action for Kentuckians to support early childhood education funding.
Welcome to the Blue Dot, Northern Kentucky's premier political podcast, brought to you by the Kenton County Democratic Executive Committee. Welcome back to the Blue Dot Podcast, where we like to talk about the kitchen table topics affecting those in the bluegrass and beyond. And today we're gonna travel a little east to Maryland. And while Kentucky is about four times larger in size than Maryland, they are home to 1.7 million more people. But we have one thing in common that we'll be discussing today, and that is public education. Thanks so much for joining. I'm Natalie McDonald.
SPEAKER_02And I'm Brian Cale. Uh, that's right, Natalie. Today we'll be talking to Chris Pabst, Emmy winning investigative reporter with Fox 45 in Baltimore, and the author of a new book entitled Failure Factory How Baltimore City Public Schools Deprive Taxpayers and Students of a Future. I mean, if that title doesn't get your attention, I don't know what does.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's a really fascinating and important topic. Mr. Paps actually reached out to us after listening to our podcast interview with William Compton, the Democratic candidate for Kentucky's second congressional district. As our listeners may remember, William is an educator, and we spoke with him quite a bit about his education concerns here in Kentucky. Chris said that he was especially struck by William's description of his journey from the classroom to Congress and how during the interview we talked about how public education reform affects not just students, but entire communities.
SPEAKER_02That's right, Natalie. Based upon our conversation with William, Chris contacted us to see if we thought our listeners would be interested in learning about the issues and challenges he discovered at Baltimore City Public Schools. We absolutely welcome the opportunity. And while his reporting focuses on public schools in Baltimore, his findings have national relevance and they raise important questions for communities everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they sure do. You know, failure factories built on nearly a decade of investigative reporting into one of the most highly funded and historically low performing school systems in the country. Before we bring Chris in, though, I wanted to review a few issues that we're facing with Kentucky education right here at home. And we talked a lot about on this podcast education bills currently moving through the Kentucky legislature. One of those bills is House Bill One, which we've talked about, but we want to just revisit. It was filed in response to Kentucky Supreme Court's ruling that limited the use of taxpayer dollars for private schools. What this bill does is circumpense that ruling by funneling public dollars into private school tuition scholarships.
SPEAKER_02Yes, there are several others as well, but House Bill 500, which is the budget bill, which will freeze or reduce SIC funding, otherwise known as Support Education Excellence in Kentucky, which is the primary formula-based funding program for K through 12 public school districts in Kentucky. The bill will also devastate Kentucky teachers, bus drivers, and school staff who rely on the Kentucky Employment Health Plan, capping the employer contribution at 5%, which blows a massive hole in the plan, creating tens of millions of dollars in shortfalls in just a few years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's really uh a bad, a bad bill for sure. And all of this is happening as I was reading Chris's book, and it prompted me to dig into some national and state data so we could kind of frame today's conversation with some context. The book gave a lot of resources about national testing, scoring, and funding. So I took a look at a few stats for Kentucky. So, you know, when we talk to Chris, we'll be able to look at all of this with a little bit of of um of context. For instance, uh one important metric is per-pupil funding. And in Kentucky, total per pupil funding, including local, state, and federal dollars, is roughly about sixteen thousand dollars per student.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's the average, but that can be broken down into revenue sources beginning with the base seek amount, which we just spoke about, with that uh provides a per pupil guarantee from the state of$4,586. So districts make up the difference then through local and federal sources. So while the state provides a base, total expenditures vary by district, and the funding gap between the wealthiest and poorest districts has increased. As Chris will probably point out, the highest funding per pupil is found in the District of Columbia, which is$31,629 per pupil. The lowest is Idaho,$10,247.
SPEAKER_01That is just a huge discrepancy when you take a look at it, isn't it? But what does all that spending get us? And that's kind of another part of the equation. And a big part of that answer comes from the NAPE scores, which are the National Assessment of Education Progress Scores. NAPE is basically the nation's report card, and it measures how US students perform in course subjects on national and state levels. And at a high level, Kentucky performs slightly above the national average average in several subjects and has showed modest improvement over the recent years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's really interesting that according to these NAPE scores, there are trends nationally when comparing types of school systems. Private schools tend to score highest, traditional public schools fall in the middle, and charter schools on average score lowest.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, again, that's really interesting to look at. And it kind of made me think of our push for pre-K for all in Kentucky. And last Friday, we were at an event with Governor Bashir to discuss just that. It was a great event.
SPEAKER_02It was.
SPEAKER_01And uh unfortunately though, we're facing an uphill battle with Republicans in the legislature trying to get this initiative passed, which is a shame because when we look at the long-term trends, the data shows that consistent, high-quality early childhood education is a key indicator for better performances later as they go through school with their grades. In fact, states that invest heavily in early childhood education, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, they're the ones who are consistently ranked top in nape stores for reading and math.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's a wide range of positive outcomes that come from it. And the cost-benefit analysis of pre-K for All is clearly advantageous for the people in the state. And we discussed this in detail when we had Lieutenant Governor Jaclyn Coleman on the pod. I think this all gives some context to what our guests will be talking about today.
SPEAKER_01All right, so without further ado, let's welcome our guest on today. Stated earlier, Chris Paps is an Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and the lead journalist behind Project Baltimore at Fox 45 News. He's the author of the best-selling book Failure Factory, which exposes systemic failures in public education through years of investigative reporting. Mr. Paps' work has led to legislation, criminal convictions, and national recognition for public accountability in journalism. Thanks so much for being here, Chris.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Chris, it's great to have you. Before we get into the book, uh, set the stage for us a little. Uh you've spent years investigating Baltimore Public Schools, and your book, Failure Factory, is the result of a long and sustained reporting effort. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what originally pulled you into this story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we've been investigating Maryland Public Schools and Baltimore City Public Schools now for nine years. We started in January of 2017. So I work on a team called Project Baltimore. And there's five of us on this team. We work for Fox 45 News, we work for a company called Sinclair Broadcasting, and they kind of had this idea that we were going to take five people, which is a lot of resources, and devote them to one topic. And it's me, it's two photographer editors and two producers, and and and I'm the I'm the reporter. And we started in 2017. It was just kind of like an idea like, is this going to work? Does local journalism still have this type of appeal? And can local journalism really still have that type of an impact? And so it was a it was a gamble at first. And nine years later, nine years and two months later, we're still doing it because it's been uh journalistically, it's been a huge success in what we have been able to expose. And in January of 2017, the topic that we chose was public education. And the reason we picked public education was really twofold. One was that we believed at the time, and we further believe now, that public education is the root of everything. Your local economy, your crime rates, incarceration rates, jobs, all of that goes back to the quality of education that people receive in the public education system. And where you find poor public education systems is where you find lack of job opportunities, high crime rates, high incarceration rates, high poverty rates. And now we picked Baltimore City to start in because we could see using federal data that for many years, Baltimore City was one of the most funded large school systems in America, but also one of the lowest performing. And to this day, it is still the same. And I wrote Failure Factory because I think after nine years, we are doing this every single day of our lives, we have come to some conclusions about why this is happening. And I wrote the book to educate people on it so they really understand what's happening in public schools because it doesn't have to be this way. There are solutions, there are ways to make the public schools better that we know work. It's just like in many cases, we're not doing it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And when you talk about journalism and you being able to have the opportunity to do this, I think it really points out the importance of kind of that beat reporter. You know, it seems like it's really a lost form of journalism. And it's refreshing that you were given that platform and the resources, like you said, five resources to do this. So I'm assuming that institutional support was really, really important for you to be able to have the longevity of this story.
SPEAKER_00I mean, more, I mean, it was it really is everything because in Failure Factory, it covers nine years of what we've been doing. But five of those years was a lawsuit that we filed against Baltimore City Public Schools for violating Maryland's Public Information Act. And what we did here was, yeah, I just I'll set the stage a little bit because I think that the backstory is very helpful in understanding this. Yeah. In 2017, I was uh well, in 2016, I was an investigative reporter for the ABC News Affiliate in Washington, D.C. And I came to Baltimore. I left DC and I came to Baltimore for this opportunity with Project Baltimore. And I didn't know anybody when I got here. So I did what investigative journalists do, which is you pull data and you look for stories in data. Data will tell you stories. And I pulled the state test scores for 165 of the schools in Baltimore City. There's 165 public schools. And what I found was there were six schools that did not have any students that were proficient in any state testing. Not anything. Not one student in hundreds, hundreds of kids in these six schools. Not one kid was proficient in math, reading, science, nothing. So we do that story and it blows up and it goes viral, as it should. That's very alarming. And I had teachers from these schools and other schools that were reaching out to me at the time and they were saying, Yeah, this is true, but you know these kids are still graduating. And I'm like, well, how are they graduating? And the teachers would tell me that they're having administrators go into their gradebook, change failing grades to passing to promote kids through the grades and eventually give them a diploma. And so when we started hearing from dozens and dozens of teachers whom I interview in Failure Factory, you can read their words, what was happening to them as teachers. I filed a public records request with Baltimore City Schools, and I said, I would I want all public documents, such as email or internal investigations into grade changing. And the school system gave me nothing. They didn't give me one sheet of paper. So we sued them. So you ask about the resources that we have, that that was a big step because public records lawsuits are pretty rare and they're very expensive. And we ended up suing them. And in February of 2019, it went to trial, and I testified in front of a circuit court judge for a few hours. And following month in March, the judge ruled that Baltimore City Public Schools, and these are her words, willfully and knowingly violated the law by not handing over the documents. So the judge forced the school system to hand over anything, and she forced the school system to pay our legal fees of$200,000. So once we got all of these documents, we were able to uncover this massive scheme throughout Baltimore City public schools of changing failing grades to passing to simply matriculate the students through the grades and to get them high school diplomas. But more importantly, what that does, and we can talk about this a little later, is why would you do that to a kid? Why would you change a failing grade when they're not mastering the material to a passing grade? Because it makes sure the money keeps coming in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And think about the amount of money, not only did they have to pay your legal fees, but they had to pay their own fees. So there's a massive amount of money that they spent just to not be able to share this data, right?
SPEAKER_00That's the outrageous part of it. So that was really the moment where I kind of thought to myself, public education is not what I thought public education was. So when you have a public school system that is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to conceal a grade changing scandal that they knew was there and they were spending this money to conceal it. And that was one of the first times where I thought to myself, I got to write a book. Like this is outrageous, what is really going on. And I don't think people know it. And more importantly, this is happening all around the country. There just aren't Project Baltimores in many other places where they're willing to take a gamble because we didn't, we weren't guaranteed of getting our legal fees covered. We weren't guaranteed that at all. We easily could have won the lawsuit and the judge didn't grant us legal fees. It was a very expensive risk that we took. But I I can tell you, I know that this is happening all around the country. And that's why, that's really why I wrote Failure Factory, just to let people know, hey, this is happening. You need to pay attention.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the um the funding is obviously like one of the central themes. And I'm interested in what you're saying there in that, you know, it's kind of like where there's smoke, there's fire. So can you talk? And I'm really just kind of the whole investigative journalism thing, I think, is fascinating. Could you talk a little bit? You know, you said you dug into the records. Could you talk a little bit about what kinds of stats, you know, what did you find metrics that told you there's a story here? And then also talk a little bit about the kind of funding, how much funding Baltimore gets and over the years, how that funding has changed, and then map that against, you know, performance metrics and just tell us, kind of give us that whole view of that funding and why it is so important to and why there is so much money on the table.
SPEAKER_00When I first got to Baltimore in January of 2017, I had already developed a pretty good reputation as an investigative journalist in DC. And when I came here, I had a lot of people reaching out to me and they were saying, listen, if if you're really going to do this, if you're gonna devote your time into this, this is what you're gonna find. You're gonna find that the public education system, not just in Baltimore, but everywhere, the public education system is no longer prioritizing the education of students. They're prioritizing the acquisition of funding. And at the time, I straight out didn't believe it. I rejected that concept. But as I started to do this more and more through the years, my pendulum really began to swing. And really, my pendulum hit the other side with the end of that lawsuit when we saw the extent to which the school system was changing failing grades to passing and tried to hide it. That's not about helping kids, that's about helping the adults. But when you looked at the funding and what the student outcomes are, it's really outrageous. In Failure Factory, I put all of this data in there over an eight-year period, and you can look at it from for yourself. In 2017, Baltimore City School's high school graduation rate was 70%, the lowest in the state. At the same time, 11% of the kids were proficient in math. Just ponder that for a second. How can you be graduating 70% of your kids and 11% of your kids are proficient in math? And I guarantee you that a very similar thing is probably happening where you are. Now, it may not be that dramatic, but I bet it's happening if you look at the numbers. And that's what this book does is it is trying to educate people on how to find these numbers and look at them for yourself. Now, eight years later in 2025, Baltimore City got a 38% increase in funding. 2017, Baltimore City had$1.3 billion. That was the budget. In 2025, the budget was$1.8 billion, went up$500 million a year, a 38% increase in funding. Graduation rate went up 1%. Math proficiencies went up 1%. So now, sitting here, 71% of the students are graduating, and 12% of them are proficient in math. This is 2025. Well, 2026, but this is 2025 data because the graduation for 2026 isn't out yet. But that's 2025. And 12%, 88% of a kid, 88% of the kids in the school system are not proficient in math. And taxpayers gave it a third increase in funding. These are the things that as taxpayers and as parents, we need to pay attention to because this is not sustainable. This cannot continue this way. There's too much money going into public education. And the students that are coming out of it are not receiving a proper education to get good jobs to pay that money back. This is a time bomb waiting to happen. And it is not just Baltimore. It's happening all across the country. We can see all across the country how much additional monies are going into public education, but how the student outcomes are not improving along with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I loved all the data that you gave, and I'm kind of a data geek. So that I'm getting on and I'm looking at scores and how does Kentucky compare and all this kind of stuff. But what I think shocked me, and I think it's because I don't understand, when you say proficiency rate, what exactly does that mean? Because I think the national average for proficiency rate hovers like 37%. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00So the proficiency rate is based on your grade. And from third to eighth grade, and and this is this is part of federal mandates, from third to eighth grade, every student is tested in English language arts and math. And then you also have additional testing after that, where um algebra one, algebra two, geography, I believe, is tested in English 10. So those are the standardized tests that they deliver in Maryland. And I believe that it's very similar throughout every state. So when you say that the kids are not proficient, they're not proficient at their grade level. So they're in fourth grade, not proficient in fourth grade. So in Baltimore City, when I say 12% of the kids are not proficient in math, that means only 12% of the 12% of the kids are proficient at their grade level in math. 88% of the kids are behind in grade level.
SPEAKER_01I guess I'm just trying to think of, you know, how does that compare nationally if it's 12% in Baltimore?
SPEAKER_00So for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, there's there's different tests that you can look at. The standardized testing that a state does is based on the standardized tests that the state purchases. And there's different standardized tests. There's there's different companies that do it, but all states have to do it. So in Maryland, we use MCAT, Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program. Kentucky may use something different, it likely does. And there's certain ones out there. PARC is another one, PARCC, and the states buy them and they administer them. There's also the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and that is administered through the U.S. Department of Education.
SPEAKER_01That's what I was looking at.
SPEAKER_00And what that does is that that gives the same test to all 50 states, and it also gives that same test to, I think, 28 large school systems that opt into NAPE. Baltimore City opts into NAPE. So Baltimore City specifically is taking the NAPE testing along with Maryland. So you can look at that NAPE testing and you can see where your state is. And you can also see if your local jurisdiction, and usually it's the larger ones in the states, are participating in it, and you can compare it all for yourself and see where your state is compared to state national averages and and how well you're doing. Got it.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, uh I know you were gonna maybe mention that you know you had discovered that there'd been an investigation similar to this in uh Jefferson County uh in Louisville, Kentucky, um, and that uh grades were changed back and they admitted wrongdoing as part of the investigation, which is not obviously what's been happening in Baltimore all those years. Talking through the number of years and and the the just the low proficiency ratings, you know, year after year after year, I'm just wondering where was the public outcry? You know, were people not noticing this? Was this something that was well known and just nobody knew how to get to the bottom of it, or was it completely undercovers? And once you started to pull it back, people were shocked to find out what was going on.
SPEAKER_00When I got here, what I noticed was a lot of people would talk about it. How are we graduating kids that can't read? But there was no proof behind it. It's more anecdotal. And what we've been able to do with Failure Factory and with Project Baltimore is that we've been able to show with documentation that it's true. Like it in this book, I talked to a senior. Well, actually, he was graduated at this point, but I talked to a a man who his senior Senior year missed 120 days of school. There's 180 days in a school year. He missed 120. And he still walked across the stage on graduation day. And I was able to get his transcript because a teacher gave it to me and said, This kid graduated. And his address was on the transcript. So I went to his house and I knocked on his door. And I have my cameras around me and everything's recording. And he's a 20-year-old man, one o'clock in the afternoon, no job. And he answers a door. And I tell you, I say on Chris Papst, Fox 45 News, can I ask you a few questions? These cameras are rolling about being in high school. And to his credit, he said sure. And you can read everything he said in Failure Factory for yourself. He said that he did not think that he deserved to graduate. And that there were many kids at his school that he didn't feel deserved to graduate. But at the same time, he said he's happy that he did. Now remember, 20 years old, no job, missed 120 days of school in his senior year, but was still issued a diploma. So these are the types of stories that were existing when I got here. And we were able to show that they were true. So you talk about outrage. The outrage when we do these stories is not in Baltimore City. It's outside Baltimore City. And that's one of the points that I make in the book is that the reason this continues to happen is that it's allowed to happen and it's accepted. And the school, Baltimore City has determined that is happy with its school system. When we do these stories, when we sued the school and we won, mayor had had nothing bad to say about that. The city council had nothing negative to say about that. The school CEO, who was there when we sued and who broke the law, according to the judge, is still the city school CEO. Everything that we've talked about so far, how a 38% increase in funding led to a 1% increase in graduation rates and a 1% increase in math proficiencies and the lawsuit and six schools with no kids proficient in anything, that same person is still leading the school system today after being there for 10 years. And that's what you're not seeing in Baltimore. You're not seeing that the people are demanding a better public education system. And if they're not demanding it, they're not going to get it. And we know that because that's what that's what's been happening over so many years. And I think that there's a lot of energy in America right now that the Overton window, if you will, has shifted to public education. After COVID and computers came home, there's been a very strong focus in America on public education. And I really think this book is coming along at the right time because this is when we as taxpayers, I mean, I have two kids in public school myself. So I'm not just reporting on this stuff. Like I'm living it. Like I live this every single day. I have a stake in this.
SPEAKER_01Two things really stuck out to me when I read the book. First of all, failure factor, who are we failing? We're failing the kids. And you spoke to a mother. I it really stuck out to me who was just begging for help, saying, you know, the school system didn't help her and now she can't find a job if she's got a child who she's trying to get through. And the other thing when you were talking about the kids who just were absent, you also spoke about a kid who was enrolled but never actually went to school there. They were in jail, so they couldn't have actually gone to school there. So there's two things that are at play. I mean, it's obviously neglect, but then you're not only neglecting the system, you're really you're not you're hurting the kids, which is hurting the community. And you talk a lot about that.
SPEAKER_00Well, because it's heartbreaking. You know, like I uh you know, I go into these communities and in these very, very low-income communities with people who want better for their kids, much like I do. But they don't have the monetary or educational means to give it to their kids. They can't get out of their situation. Maryland has no form of school choice, so they're stuck in these failing schools. They don't have money to leave, they can't move to a better school system because they can't afford the housing. And it's it's heartbreaking because they all want something better for their kids. And there's a woman I spoke to, Michelle Bradley, and what was really difficult with me speaking with her is that she made it to high school in Baltimore City and never learned how to read. And it turned out that she was dyslexic and the school system either didn't care or didn't want to diagnose it, but they kept pushing her along. So this has been happening for a very long time. And she got to high school and dropped out, and now she has two daughters that are in in Baltimore City public schools. She lives in Section 8 housing, abject poverty, yeah, like stuff that most people in America don't get a chance to see. And and I think that that's something with this book and with my job that it does give me perspective that other people don't get. But in speaking with Michelle, like she wants better for her kids. But the problem is that she was undereducated by the same school system her children now attend. And she can't help her kids. So there's a lot of people that when I when I'm doing my book tour, they say, What about the parents? What about the parents? Yeah, parents have a huge impact. But go talk to Michelle Bradley, spend an hour with her, and you tell me that that woman's at fault for the for the problems that her kids are facing in school and their lack of education. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you agree, how are you gonna help your kids? But yet you got to high school. And this stuff is it's it's it's it's really hard as a parent, you know, to know what she's going through and to know that she's stuck. And it it's it's troubling. And I I think that it doesn't need to be this way. There are solutions that can help somebody like Michelle Bradley, but places like Baltimore don't seem to have any interest in doing them. And it's really places all around the country that don't have any interest in doing them.
SPEAKER_01She's the one that's stuck with me, the way you described your visit with her, you know.
SPEAKER_02It has to be, yeah, and it has to be so frustrating for parents like her who want to do something, don't have the resources or just, you know, the ability um to solve the problem or address the problem, address the issue, and it just causes even more stress and concern for people have so many other things that in their lives that they have to get through. It just seems so unnecessary and unfair, as you know, we find in many, many places all over right now. Um there was I I saw um I was doing some research, I'm not sure if it was one of the interviews you did on another podcast or something, but you did talk about some high-performing schools in Baltimore, and um you raised one really compelling reason um that you had found or one thing that you know you felt could um, you know, be uh implemented to help some of these schools right out of the gate. And I found that conversation interesting. You were talking about uh behavior in the classroom and how to and addressing that. And I thought, yeah, wow, that is I found that to be very interesting, very compelling.
SPEAKER_00One of the, if not the biggest issue in American public schools right now is discipline. And most every teacher that I talk to, the biggest problem they have is discipline. And teachers have largely been stripped of their ability to enforce accountability onto students. And a student will be misbehaving, disrupting class, the teacher sends the student to the principal's office, and the principal sends them right back into class the next period. Now, first off, why would a principal do that? Why would a principal not want to hold students accountable? Well, it goes back to everything that everything goes back to. You just got to follow the money because what schools don't want to do is they don't want to suspend kids. They don't want to expel kids. Because if a kid is no longer enrolled, the schools do not get the money. And principals want to make the data of their school look good. They don't want a lot of suspensions. They don't want to document violence and fighting and weapons, they don't want to do those types of things. So what you end up having is the teachers having to deal with this stuff in the classroom as they're trying to teach. And we're having a teacher shortage in America. And it's not because people don't want to teach, it's because people don't want to teach in the environment that's been created in these public schools. They want to go into class, they want to write a lesson plan that they're proud of, and they want to deliver that lesson plan. But now you have a kid that is acting out and you can't get him out of your classroom. So what you see in higher performing schools and in Failure Factory, I take you to them and I show you what they're doing. And one of the main things they're doing is holding the kids accountable for their actions. It's the principal who doesn't care what the data looks like. It's a principal who cares if the students are learning. And those are the types of things that you need to have. And those are the types of things that we're that we're largely not seeing in many schools. And it's it's really hurting public education substantially. And it's not just because the teachers don't want to be in that condition, it's the byproduct of that, which is we don't we have fewer and fewer teachers that have a lot of experience because they're not staying 30 years. They're not staying 20 years. And they're I mean, even with my kids, I'll just tell you this with my kids, the teachers that have 25, 30 years experience are better than the teachers that have five. Okay, that's not going to blow anybody's mind. It makes sense. Right. But we're having fewer teachers get to that 25 and 30 because of the conditions in the schools and the violence and the lack of discipline. So it's a huge issue in America's classrooms. And that is one of the solutions that wouldn't cost any tax players additional money that would almost immediately improve student academic outcomes. But why is it not doing why are they not doing it because of money? And I'll just end with this. As I one of the things that I learned, and really what Failure Factory is, is is largely what I have learned in nine years of doing this. So when I started in January of 2017, most of what's in this book, I had no idea public schools were like this. But here's one of the big ones, and it goes back to your question that public schools in Maryland and in most all parts of the country are not funded based on the education of kids. They're not funded, they're not paid to educate kids. They're paid to enroll kids. Schools get funding based on enrollment. They do not get funding based on education. So the decisions that a school makes is to ensure children stay enrolled, not to ensure children get educated.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and like you said, there's some bright points. And we always we always try to land on something that's somewhat positive. So as I was reading through your book, I kept waiting for the break, right? I kept waiting for some re you know, this revelation that sparked true change. But in the end, while what you uncovered brought a lot of awareness to the community, there wasn't a lot of changes that took place. In fact, it seems like the standards were just lowered and somewhat of a shell game to make things look better. So I want to ask, see if there is any positive to this. What hope do you have that things things can get better in Baltimore and around the country?
SPEAKER_00I have a lot of hope. Uh people just need to know. People need to understand. Like, like you're talking about the lowering of standards and how Maryland wanted to graduate more kids from high school. So most people would think if you want to do that, you better educate the kids, but that's not what Maryland did. Maryland just lowered the requirements to graduate from high school and made it easier to graduate. And graduation rates still didn't go up. And you know, I I have hope. And you're saying that not much has changed. And it's kind of like interesting the way that you would phrase that because from my perspective, a lot of things have changed. And here's what I mean by that. When we sued Baltimore City Schools, we set a legal precedent throughout the state of Maryland on how Public Information Act lawsuits are to be followed. So we we really were able to establish what a plaintiff can do in a public information act complaint violation. That's enormous moving forward for transparency and accountability in government. After we did the grade changing investigation, Baltimore City schools rewrote their entire grading policies. Who's able to put in grades? How are who's able to change grades? What, because you know, kids, kids can do extra work to change grades. You know, how does that process have to work? How many people have to oversee it? You can no longer just have somebody going into a teacher gradebook and changing a grade like you could, you know, six or seven years ago. There's been laws that have changed regarding safety in schools that that we reported on. So a lot of those things have changed. What hasn't changed, and in many ways, what's getting worse, are the student academic outcomes because there's nothing that local journalism can do about that. That has to be the voters, the people who live in the city. They have to vote for different people that are going to hold the school system accountable and say, we're not going to give you all this money until you give us better educated kids. You need to start earning the money instead of just getting the money because you enrolled a kid on September 30th. And those are the things that have to change. And that's really why I wrote the book because I'm hoping that most people in the country will take a little bit of extra time and vote for the right person for their school board, not just overlook that vote. That is a very important vote. Vote for the right person for your school board. All I mean by that is a person who's going to hold the school accountable for the amount of money that it gets in the student outcomes that taxpayers get. And vote for the right person for state senate, for state house, someone who's going to actually watch the school system after they give the school system your money. Vote for the right governor who's going to hold the school system accountable. It's not really all that hard. You just have to have people who are willing to do it.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. It was also fascinating. Fascinating.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, very much. Well, Chris, you know, thanks so much for joining us. And I do think uh I agree with you, your book is very timely in that, you know, education, especially here in Kentucky, or like many other states, I'm sure, has become a real focus. People are really starting to pay attention and start to demand uh some reforms and improvements. So hopefully, you know, you're leading that that that wave. You know, we have a big pre-K for all initiative that our governor and uh Lieutenant Governor are driving and trying to get put into our budget. And it goes back to what you said at the very beginning, you know, education is the foundation upon, you know, successful outcomes are based for everyone's future. So uh, you know, the more informed we are, the better decisions we can make, the better leaders we can elect and and you know move our education forward. So we appreciate your again, your time and your your book and all your efforts. Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me on.
SPEAKER_01And everybody can find your book Amazon, right? Uh do you have a website or anything you want to do?
SPEAKER_00Amazon, Bars and Noble, Goodreads, anywhere books are sold. My website's Chris Papst.com, P-A-P-S-T, Chris Papst on X, Chris Papst on Facebook. Um very easy to get a hold of. If you if you pick up a copy of the book, you know, read it, write reviews, let me know. Reach out to me. Let's let's keep the conversation going.
SPEAKER_02And you uh also I just wanted to mention you you've had you've written at least one other book that I noticed. You're what's uh do you want to go ahead and you know, pitch a couple of your other uh things that you've worked on, you know, take advantage of the platform.
SPEAKER_00So my first book was called uh Capital Murder, how uh an investigative reporter's hunt for answers in a collapsing city. And that was my time in Harrisburg. I spent four years as an investigative reporter in Harrisburg and I covered that city's financial collapse. And Harrisburg holds a distinction of being the only capital city in American history to file for bankruptcy. And I wrote Capital Murder explaining what Harrisburg did wrong, because it's a capital city. That's where all the money from the state's coming. And they still filed for bankruptcy. So I wrote that book about um how what what Harrisburg did wrong, you know, with the same goal of Failure Factory, which is to show people what not to do when it comes to uh running a government. And then my second book is called Devolution, and that is a novel that I wrote that is about a country that destroys itself through political warfare. And then my third book is uh Failure Factory.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Well, fantastic. Um well, we again we sure appreciate you having on having you on, and um, you know, wish you luck in the future. Investigative journalism is you know near and dear to our hearts. You know, we really love our journalists, so thanks for everything you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Take care, Chris. Before we wrap up the podcast, we'd like to end with a call to action. As we focused on education this week, we want to stress the importance of contacting your legislators to support funding for Pre-K for All. Pre-K for All was not included in the House Republican version of Kentucky's 2026 budget, despite Governor Bashir's request. There is still hope in the Senate, though, where Senate bills 165 and 166 are advancing this initiative.
SPEAKER_02Pre-K for All is supported by teachers, superintendents, the business community, and the majority of Kentuckians. We just need to make sure our representatives hear us loud and proud.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And that is it for this podcast. Thank you for joining. And don't forget you can join the conversation at our Facebook and Instagram pages or at blue dotpodcast.com. And if you like listening to the podcast, please consider consider donating to fund it, which you can do by clicking on the donate link at blue dotpodcast.com. Until next time, stay curious, keep the facts in focus, and never stop fighting for what matters. Peace out, everybody.