September 3, 2025 • 36 mins
Newt talks with Fox45 Baltimore investigative reporter Chris Papst about the alarming shift in public education priorities, as highlighted in his new book, "Failure Factory." Their conversation focuses on how academic outcomes are being manipulated in Baltimore City Public Schools, where students are promoted without receiving an adequate education. Papst reveals that failing grades are often changed to passing, and dangerous school environments are downplayed to maintain funding. Despite significant financial investment, student performance remains poor, with only 10% of students proficient in math. Papst argues that the system prioritizes employing adults over educating students, leading to dire consequences for local communities. They also discuss the lack of accountability from public officials and the challenges faced by parents in holding the school system accountable. Papst highlights the need for systemic change in urban school systems across the country.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World, A significant realignment has
recently occurred in public education. The focus has shifted to
value data and funding over students and futures. In his
new book, Failure Factory, Chrisphaps highlights this transition by exposing
now academic outcomes are manipulated while students are promoted through
(00:26):
the grade levels without receiving the education they need. When
students fail classes, their grades are often changed to passing.
If schools appear dangerous, arrest and suspensions are no longer recorded,
their graduation rates decline, academic metrics are adjusted, making it
easier to receive a diploma. What's happening in Baltimore schools
(00:48):
is not unique, it is ubiquitous. The new educational mindset,
which prioritizes data over students and funding over futures, is
quickly spreading across the country, with equally dire consequences for
local communities. Here to discuss his new book, I'm really
pleased to welcome my guest, one of the real champions
(01:10):
and a man who has methodically worked in a focus
way for years. Chris Papst is Sinclair's Fox forty five
project Baltimore lead investigative reporter. He is a national Emmy
Award winning investigative reporter in the twenty twenty three Maryland
State Conference and WACP Vanguard Award recipient. Chris, Welcome and
(01:46):
thank you for joining me again on News World.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Mister speaker, thank you. I appreciate you having me on
and supporting this book.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
In this work, I think what you're doing is amazing.
Tell us a little bit about Project Baltimore, which has
become I think one of the most impactful local reporting
initiatives in the entire country. How did Fox forty five
decide to launch it and what was your original vision
for the project?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So is twenty seventeen and I was an investigative reporter
working for WJLA, which is the ABC News affiliate in Washington, DC,
and the ownership of Sinclair had this idea of creating
a five person unit to only investigate public education. And
the reason that they chose public education is because nothing
(02:33):
seemed to make any sense. So if you look at
census data, you have a bunch of federal data that
you can look at and you can see that for
years and decades, Baltimore City Public Schools was one of
the most funded large school systems in America, but yet
it was also one of the lowest performing. So how
(02:55):
are we pumping billions of dollars into the school system
and the student outcomes are simply atrocious? So to talk
about what was happening right now? Twenty twenty four, which
is the most recent full school year for which we
have data because it generally lags a year. In twenty
twenty four, Baltimore City Schools had a one point seven
(03:18):
billion dollar budget and ten percent of the students who
were tested scored proficient in math. Ninety percent of the
kids in this school system were not proficient in math,
and taxpayers are giving the school system one point seven
billion dollars. How can that happen? Why is that allowed
(03:40):
to happen? Why are people in Baltimore City, specifically the
public officials, the mayor of the governor, city council, why
are they not screaming about the failed academic outcomes in
Baltimore City Public schools. Now, to go back to twenty seventeen,
eight years ago, it was the same exact situation. At
(04:02):
that point, there was one point three billion dollars that
was getting put into the school system, and the math
proficiencies were eleven percent. So you look over the past
eight years and you're seeing an increase in the amount
of money going to the school system from one point
three to one point seven billion dollars a year. So
(04:22):
the school system is getting four hundred million more dollars
a year, and they outcomes are nearly identical, if not
worse than they were eight years ago. That was the
intent of Project Baltimore to simply ask the question, how
do we continue to do the same thing over and
over again and it's leading to all the problems that
(04:45):
you're seeing in Baltimore. We're seeing President Trump right now
talking about sending troops into Baltimore to quell the violence
and the crime. And mister speaker, I would contend the
violence in crime is not the problem. It's a symptom
of the problem. The problem is that the kids in
the school system for decades have not been getting the
(05:06):
proper education. They don't have the English language arts proficiencies,
they don't have the math proficiencies, and they cannot properly
support their families. The school system is the problem.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Why is the school system so unwilling to modify and
change in response to this kind of data.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, when I first started Project Baltimore in twenty seventeen,
a lot of people had said to me, as you
start investigating this, what you're going to find out is
that the intent of the school system, the priority of
the school system is not to educate students. The priority
is to employ adults. And when I first heard that
(05:49):
back in twenty seventeen, I went to public schools, my
kids go to public schools. I didn't want to believe that.
It was hard for me to want to think that
a school system's priority is not the kids but rather
the adults. But eight years later, as we sit here
in twenty twenty five, and as I write this book,
Failure Factory, I think that that is the case. I
(06:10):
think that when you look at situations like what you're
seeing in Baltimore City, you see that the priority is
not necessarily educating the kids. And I'll give you a
data example for why that appears to be true in
many people's eyes. We have a school system in Baltimore
City that over eight years, has lost sixty five hundred
(06:32):
students in the enrollment. However, there's about thirteen hundred more
employees that are working in the school system. So you
have more employees and more money to educate fewer students,
and most of the academic outcomes are going in the
wrong direction. And when you see something like that, and
(06:54):
this is not a one year or two year snapshot,
this is an eight year snapshot, you have to look
at that and think to yourself, well, this is just
the intent. If it weren't the intent, it wouldn't be
that way. You would see that the additional money, you
would see that the additional employees would create better outcomes
(07:15):
for the students. But they're not. It's going in the
opposite direction. And then there's no accountability. There is nobody
in this school system. There is nobody who's a public
official representing Baltimore City that is saying this is not acceptable.
These numbers don't make sense. Why are ten percent of
(07:35):
our kids proficient in math when we have thirteen hundred
additional employees over the past eight years. What are those
employees doing. Why are the students not achieving more? And
to go back to your original question, it's because the
school system appears to have been valuing the number of
(07:56):
adults that they are employing, and those adults making very
healthy salaries over the education of the students in the
school system.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
When you talk to them, if you're one of these
adults and you are being paid to preside over abject failure,
I mean, how do you cope with that? How do
you explain it to yourself?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Many of them come to me and they explain it
to me. What I'm telling you is not necessarily my words.
What I'm telling you are the words of the people
that I've interviewed inside Baltimore City schools, high level administrators, teachers,
the people that are working in the system. This is
what they're telling me. And I think that a majority
(08:37):
of the people in that school system are good, honest,
hardworking people. But when they come to me, they want
to be anonymous. They don't want to give their names
because they don't want to lose their jobs. And we
have seen that when people inside the school system hold
the school system accountable by publicly going to the media
(08:57):
or publicly going on social media or sites like that,
there is retribution against them because there's a lot of money,
mister speaker, this is one point seven billion dollars and
people want part of that money. We can see over
the eight years, and I have this data in Failure
(09:18):
Factory that director level positions in Baltimore City Public schools.
In those eight years, the salary has increased by twenty
one percent. Ten percent of students are proficient in math.
You look at administrative positions, they've increased by twenty percent
of their salaries and there's many more of them. As
(09:41):
the school system is decreasing in enrollment, it's adding administrators,
is adding director level positions. And all of these positions
are six figure salaries where people are making a lot
of money. So the people inside the school system that
get the pensions, that get those six figure salaries, they
don't want to lose them. And I understand that as
(10:02):
someone who has a family, I get it you don't
want to lose them. But somebody outside of that system
has to hold them accountable and say, if you're going
to get this money and we're going to hire all
these people, we better have better student outcomes. And that
part is not what's happening. And that's why I wrote
Failure Factory, because people need to know what's going on,
(10:23):
especially in these large urban school systems, because of that mindset.
I can see it in Maryland that mindset is seeping
out into the counties, and it's seeping out into the
rural areas of America.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Part of what I'm struck by is that rather than
trying to fix it, they just tried to cover it up.
You indicate that there's an Inspector General report that more
than twelve thousand failing grades were improperly changed. They simply
gave them better grades so they would look better, even
though they couldn't do anything. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
So one of the administrators, high level administrators in North
Avenue and North Avenue is the administrative building for Baltimore
City Public Schools colloquially is called North Avenue. A high
level administrator told me that the school system is prioritizing data,
like you had mentioned in the open to this podcast,
they're prioritizing the data over the success of the students.
(11:37):
And what that means is when students aren't passing, we
have seen and we know that, they simply change the
failing grades to passing. So why would they do that.
They do that because it increases the pass rate at
the schools. Because if you have a pass rate that
is low, there's a higher chance for these students to
(12:01):
be dropping out. And when a student drops out, the
school system no longer gets the funding for that student
because funding levels are based on a per pupil basis.
So the whole thing wraps around data equaling money. And
if you can keep these kids enroll and you can
keep them passing despite if they get the proper education,
(12:24):
the schools keep the money coming in. I spoke with
a teacher who is in this book, who actually gave
us her name, by the way, and doesn't work for
the school system anymore. Coincidentally, she said that the school
systems are not focused on educating kids. They're focused on
passing kids. Get them to the next grade, get them
(12:45):
from second to third grade, get them from eight to
ninth grade. And then we talk to other teachers who
have said, and we know this is true, that Baltimore
City Schools has graduated kids who can't read. You literally
give them a diploma that they cannot read. It sounds
like hyperbole, but that is where the situation actually is.
So how does that happen? How does the kid get
(13:07):
to high school and they can't read. It happens because
you're passing them along because the focus is on passing,
as a teacher said, not educating the students. It's about
the data.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
One of these samples you use is a student who
in four years earned a grade point average of zero
point one three. He only passed three classes, but his
class rank was sixty two out of one twenty. That
means and that half of his classmate's fifty eight of
them had a zero point one three grade point average
(13:42):
or lower.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yep, that's true.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I mean he's going to graduate with no ability to
get a job or hold a job down, or figure
out how check book or do any of a thousand
things you have to do in the modern world. How
do they rationalize it to themselves?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
That's why I wrote this book, mister speaker, because I
don't know how do you have a situation like that?
And that school is still open. There are still hundreds
of kids that go to that school. That school was
Augusta Fells Savage. It's a high school where we found
this student. His mom had come to us because he
was in that school for four years and he was
(14:16):
still a freshman. He was a freshman after four years
because he had only passed a few classes and he
had a zero point one three GPA, which placed him
in the middle of his class. These are the stories
that are in failure factory. These are the stories that
people need to know because that's real. What are those
other kids supposed to do? As you mentioned, what kind
(14:39):
of jobs can they get? And that's why I go
back to the crime and violence in Baltimore is not
the problem, it's the symptom. The problem is schools like
Augusta Fells. And Augusta Fells is not alone. There are
other schools in Baltimore City that have very similar academic outcomes.
For these students, they don't go to school, they don't
get an education, but they keep moving their way through
(15:02):
the grades. In the book, we talk about one high
school where I got some data that is not made public,
but one of the administrators at the school, again a
good person who sees something wrong and wants to blow
the whistle, had sent me data concerning reading scores of
this school and this high school. Seventy five percent of
the kids we're reading at an elementary school level. I
(15:26):
think it was ten or twenty percent of the kids
we're reading at a first or second grade level. You
hear that and you shake your head and you think,
how can that happen? And that's what failure factory is
pointing out, how can this happen? And quite frankly, it
happens because it's allowed to Because no one in Baltimore
City is screaming. No public official is screaming for better results.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Why aren't the parents screaming? They are?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
They come to us in the book, we talk to
a lot of parents, and the problem is that you
have a one point seven billion dollar school system that
squashes people. And if you're a mom, you're a single mom,
you have two or three kids, you have two or
three jobs, you make thirty thousand and thirty five thousand
(16:13):
dollars a year. How are you supposed to go up
against a one point seven billion dollar school system that
has extremely well paid attorneys. You can't. You simply can't.
So parents feel powerless, They feel like they don't have
any way to get their message out, and that is
when they call Project Baltimore. And these are the parents
(16:35):
that I speak to in the book that are telling
me that their kids failing grades are being changed to passing.
They want their student held back to better learn the material,
but the school system passes them anyway. And when they
try to push back, there's only so much they can
do because they don't have the resources, they don't have
the money, they can't hire attorneys, and quite frankly, they're
(16:57):
just trying to survive. They're trying to in a city
that is not giving them the services, specifically the education
that they need. And if I can just make one
more point about the parent situation here. When we started
Project Baltimore in twenty seventeen, I was of the mindset,
where are the parents, Why aren't the parents doing more?
(17:21):
And eight years later, you know, after we talk about,
you know, writing the book Failure Factory, I don't have
that mindset anymore because I've now spent eight years speaking
to the parents who won something better for their kids.
But many of these parents went to the same school
system that their kids now go to. And many of
(17:41):
the parents, if not most of them, are also under
educated by this same school system that their kids now
go to. There's a woman in the book, her name's
Michelle Bradley, and she can't read. She made it to
high school in Baltimore City schools, she cannot read, and
now she has two daughters in the school system. How
(18:02):
is she supposed to help those kids? How is she
supposed to help them with their homework when she herself
went to the school system and she can't read. The
parents are not getting one point seven billion dollars. The
school system is getting one point seven billion dollars. And
that money is not predicated on the conditions of the
(18:23):
students that they leave when they walk into that school
house door. That money is intended to educate every child,
no matter their home environment, and if the school systems
cannot educate them, the school system should perhaps give the
money back. But that part never happens. The schools get
the money, the kids go into the school, they don't
(18:43):
get an education, and it's just year in and year
out of the same thing, over and over again.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I remember years ago when Governor came into Jersey took
over the Newark school system and put it into state receivership.
Why have the governors and the state governments not responded
to this clearly dysfunctional and destructive school system.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That is an outstanding question, and it also goes back
to why I wrote this book, Failure Factory. I cannot
get answers. What you get is from many of the
elected officials that are in this city is you get
historical underfunding. You get redlining, you get racism, you get
(19:32):
white flight, you get all these reasons for why the
school system is not progressing and why the students are
not achieving. What you don't get is an actual answer,
and you don't often get school systems that are being
held accountable by the officials that are there to give
the school system money and then make sure that the
(19:52):
money is spent appropriately. Let me give you this little
titive information. The only Republican that has any jurisdiction at
all over Baltimore City is President Trump and then Vice
President JD.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Vance.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
The two state senators in Maryland that have jurisdiction over
Baltimore City are Democrats. Every US House and representative member
that has jurisdiction in Baltimore is a Democrat. The governor,
every state level position Democrat. Every state House and state
senator that has jurisdiction over Baltimore is a Democrat. Every
(20:31):
elected local official in Baltimore City is a Democrat. So
what you have here is complete one party rule. The
only Republican that has anything any jurisdiction at all over
Baltimore is President Trump. So it's kind of like an
echo chamber. I go to the governor he's a Democrat.
I go to the comptroller, he's a Democrat, the mayor,
(20:53):
the president of city Council. I go to Angel also Brooks,
I go to Chris van holl and the two senators.
They're all Democrats, and they all say the same thing.
They point to the same issues of why the school
system isn't doing better, and it's just the same thing
every year in and year out, despite the data that
we report that we're talking about right now.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
So there's talk that your current governor, Wes Moore, is
a potential candidate for president. I would think that what
you're describing in your book becomes an unbelievable liability for him.
How does he explain this?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I think he's going to explain it the way that
I just explained it. He's going to talk about historical racism.
He's going to talk about underfunding. He's going to talk
about redlining, he's going to talk about white right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
How do you with a straight face take the third
or fourth most expensive school district in the country and
explain that it's a function of underfunding.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
They're going to say, and this is what they do,
say that if you look at the sixties, the seventies,
the eighties, the nineties. Now you're right. For the pasts,
I'm going to say fifteen to twenty years, Baltimore City
has been one of the most funded school systems in America.
I don't know what the funding looks like prior to that,
because the data that I'm getting is US Census data,
(22:09):
is federal data. But they're going to say that it's
historically underfunded, even though that historical underfunding was generations ago.
That is their argument for why the school system isn't
doing better now. However, for the past ten years, Baltimore
City has been in the top five. It's one of
the top five most funded school systems in America. And
(22:32):
we've already gone over the results.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I mean, one of the things you mentioned, which I've
always been fascinated by is the existence of what are
basically ghost students. I think this is a fascinating example
of the found dishonesty of the system.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So the way that schools are funded in Baltimore and
throughout America is that you get money based on the
number of students who are enrolled, and if you have
more students who are enrolled, you get more money. And
over the eight years that we've been doing Project Baltimore,
and this is one of the bigger themes in the
book is that the school system in many instances inflates
(23:26):
their enrollment to get more money. Now we know this
is happening. This is not anecdotal. We absolutely know this happening.
We first broke this story probably about four years ago
that there was a school that had students that were
enrolled in the school for two or three years that
(23:48):
were not attending the school. We had administrators inside of
that school that were anonymous, of course didn't want to
come forward, but they were leaking the information about students
in that school that were not actually there, and they
gave me their addresses. So we went out one day
when we started knocking on doors and we were asking
(24:08):
them when was the last time that you were in
Baltimore City schools? And they would say two years, three years,
And I'm like, you're enrolled. Who's enrolling you? And they
would look at the data because I had their transcripts.
The transcripts were being given to me and they would say,
I don't know who's enrolling me. It's not me, mister speaker.
I found a student who was in jail and enrolled
(24:33):
in Baltimore City Public schools. He got out of jail.
I went and found him and I spoke with him,
and I said, where have you been? He goes, I
was incarcerated. He was dealing drugs, and I was like,
have you been to school? He goes, I haven't been
to school since twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen, and somebody was
enrolling him, getting sixteen seventeen, eighteen thousand dollars a year
(24:56):
from taxpayers to educate a student who is in jail.
Now you want to talk about taxpayer abuse. Taxpayers are
funding this person in jail, and they're also funding this
person to be educated in a school that they're not at.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I mean, isn't it just playing fraud?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I don't understand how no one has been charged criminally
for this.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I don't know what percent of the school's funding is federal,
but I suspect there's a direct federal interest in this
money being paid out for things that aren't happening, which
is just playing fraud.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It's between eight and ten percent, So eight and ten
percent of Baltimore City Schools funding is federal moneies.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And then the rest of us is being funded by
the people of Baltimore and Maryland, so they also have
a fraud claim. Now you have really been courageous and
determined and very smart and walk us through this. You
end up in this amazing court case where the school
district basically at one point just rejects the judge's orders.
(25:56):
At the end of all this, the judge forces the
school district to reimb Fox forty five legal fees about
two hundred thousand dollars by itself. This is a great story,
So walk us through that.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
In twenty seventeen is when I first had teachers coming
to me because that's when we launched, and they were
saying that their grades were being changed and that there
were kids that were graduating who they had failed in
courses required to graduate and they couldn't understand why these
kids were graduating getting diplomas, and it was because their
grades were being changed. So I filed a public records
(26:30):
request with Baltimore City Public Schools, which, as an investigative reporter,
is something that I do and so a lot are
the main functions of my job. And Baltimore City Schools
wrote me back and said, we're not going to give
you anything. And I'm like, what do you mean, You're
not going to give me anything. You're telling me that
emails and internal investigations into grade changing is not public record,
(26:52):
and they're like, we're not giving you anything. And I
was like, all right. So we sued them, and we
went to court and I testified for a few hours
on the stand in front of Judge Genie Hong, who's
a Baltimore City judge, and she ruled in our favor
on all eight counts that were discussed into lawsuit, and
she said Baltimore City Public Schools willfully and knowingly violated
(27:17):
the law by not handing over the documents that I
had requested. She said that they knew that they were
violating the law by not releasing public documents, but they
did it anyway. She then forced them to pay our
legal fees fox forty five legal fees of roughly two
hundred thousand dollars, and then she forced them to hand
over all the documents that we had requested, and it
(27:40):
turned out that there was a lot more documents than
they had originally told us concerning great changing investigations and
emails from teachers that were begging the school system to
stop changing their grades. And it was because of that
lawsuit and winning that lawsuit that we got a large
amount of the documents in Failure Factory that led to
(28:01):
the creation of Failure Factory because we saw how pervasive
grade changing was in Baltimore City Public Schools. And it again,
it goes back to the data. It goes back to
making the schools look better than they are, to keep
the kids in school, to keep the money train flowing.
That's what this all comes back to.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
How much is the highest paid person in the Baltimore
school system.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
So that is the CEO. Baltimore City Schools does not
have a superintendent. They have a CEO and her total
compensation is five hundred thousand dollars right around there now,
five hundred thousand dollars for ten percent of students who
are proficient in math. And she has been doctor Sony
(28:47):
Santalisis is her name. She has been the CEO of
Baltimore City Schools the entire eight years that this book
covers everything that we have talked about, mister Speaker on
your podcast, knowingly and willfully breaking the law ghost students
grade changing. All of this stuff happened with the same
person in charge, and that person has one hundred percent
(29:11):
support from the public officials in Baltimore. The mayor fully
supports her, the president of City Council fully supports her.
Every council member, to my knowledge, no one's calling for
her to resign the governor. She's been there for eight
years total compensation.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And is that in part just a function of how
much money the school district has. In the fact that
it's not rational for the local politicians to take her on.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I think that when you have a one party rule
echo chamber in Baltimore, which we discussed just a few
minutes ago, who's going to break ranks with that? And
you don't see anybody breaking ranks with that. When Governor
Larry Hogan was here, and he was a two term
Republican governor who left three years ago, he did speak
(29:57):
out a lot against Baltimore City Public School, but he
was really the lone voice, and he was a singular
Republican who had jurisdiction over the city. There's no other
Republican that had jurisdiction over the city. He was the
only one, and he spoke out a lot against it,
and he got hammered for it. People called him a racist.
You know what the climate was like three or four
(30:19):
years ago, and he tried. He said a lot of things.
I interview him a lot. He called for criminal investigations,
he called it fraud when the enrollment numbers were being falsified,
but nothing ever came of it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
One of the things you noted in passing is that
despite the groundbreaking research he were doing and the investigative reporting,
the other three TV stations in the Baltimore Sun all
have sort of avoided this issue. Why do you think that.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Is, Well, the Baltimore Sun is under new ownership now
and they have taken full stake in these issues, so
they have now picked it up. But the Baltimore Sun
under the prior ownership, they ignored it. The television stations
ignored it. And I think that it was a detriment
to certainly the kids in Baltimore City schools that are
(31:12):
being under educated, as a detriment to their parents. But unfortunately,
we live in a very hyper competitive media world, and
a lot of the local television stations and the Baltimore
Sun at the time, they weren't interested in picking up
a story that Fox forty five in Project Baltimore and
Chris PABs were doing, and if you think about it,
(31:34):
it's really hard to wrap your head around that because
when you have inflated enrollment. At one point, mister speaker,
after we had done a number of stories on inflated
enrollment at just one school, Baltimore City Schools had to
refund state taxpayers three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
students that were enrolled who should not have been enrolled
(31:55):
at one school. They had to give back three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, and the other media entities in
this town did not cover it because it was instigated
by Fox forty five in Project Baltimore's investigative reporting. It's
stunning really. However, with the Son's new ownership, that has changed,
so there are more media entities now in Baltimore. They're saying, hey,
(32:18):
one point seven billion dollars, ten percent math for efficiencies.
Maybe we should report on this too.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Look, I think your book is important, not only in
describing Baltimore, and I think it'll be a major major
problem for the governor if he decides to run, because
this book indicates that on his watch, the city of
Baltimore is just failing and it's failing the children, it's
failing their future. But in addition, it seems to me
(32:44):
this book creates a frame of reference for other cities
and for other investigative reporters, and frankly, for the legislatures
and the Congress to look at the patterns and habits
that have grown up because you have bureaucracies who care
more about the money than they care about the children,
and they're so powerful in their community that they can't
(33:07):
be reformed from with them. This is why what President
Trump's doing is so groundbreaking, because you can't inside Chicago
take on the Chicago system. It's just too big, too powerful.
People won't do it. And yet, much like Baltimore, it
is cheating thousands of people and creating future nightmares for us.
When we have citizens who can't get a job, can't read,
(33:29):
can't understand the issues. It's a real challenge. The best
of my knowledge, you are the most knowledgeable pioneer in
investigating all this and laying it out. And I think
that your book Failure Factory. How Baltimore City public schools
deprive taxpayers and students of the future is literally in
(33:50):
the tradition of the Great muck rakers in the early
nineteen hundreds, and I hope that it will be one
of the things which triggers an awareness that we have
to fundamentally rethink our big cities, rethink the machines, rethink
the teachers' unions, and get back to serving people, having
them live in safety, having them go to schools that
actually succeed, and having them in the environments where jobs
(34:13):
can be created. And Chris, you are, as much as
any single person in the country, a genuine pioneer and
developing this and your work, which I know has to
be exhausting and time consuming, but your work is a
real contribution to the entire country.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Mister speaker, I'm honored, thank you.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I want to thank you for the work you've done.
I want to thank you for joining me. I look
forward to having you back in the future. And I'm
going to do everything I can to help communicate that
Failure Factory is a vital book describing a phenomenon. It's
not just Baltimore City, but it's around the country, and
it's one of the things weakening America and we have
to address it. So thank you very much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Thank you anytime I'd be happy to come on and
speak with you. I think that our cities cannot survive
if our school systems are failing. Baltimore City School System
is certainly failing.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Thank you to my guest Chris Papst. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Failure Factory on
our show page at newsworld dot com. Newtworld is produced
by Gangwish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is
Guarnsei Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(35:25):
to the team at Gangwish three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three freeweekly
columns at gagwischtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm neute gingrich.
(35:47):
This is Newtsworld.
On this episode of News World, A significant realignment has
recently occurred in public education. The focus has shifted to
value data and funding over students and futures. In his
new book, Failure Factory, Chrisphaps highlights this transition by exposing
now academic outcomes are manipulated while students are promoted through
(00:26):
the grade levels without receiving the education they need. When
students fail classes, their grades are often changed to passing.
If schools appear dangerous, arrest and suspensions are no longer recorded,
their graduation rates decline, academic metrics are adjusted, making it
easier to receive a diploma. What's happening in Baltimore schools
(00:48):
is not unique, it is ubiquitous. The new educational mindset,
which prioritizes data over students and funding over futures, is
quickly spreading across the country, with equally dire consequences for
local communities. Here to discuss his new book, I'm really
pleased to welcome my guest, one of the real champions
(01:10):
and a man who has methodically worked in a focus
way for years. Chris Papst is Sinclair's Fox forty five
project Baltimore lead investigative reporter. He is a national Emmy
Award winning investigative reporter in the twenty twenty three Maryland
State Conference and WACP Vanguard Award recipient. Chris, Welcome and
(01:46):
thank you for joining me again on News World.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Mister speaker, thank you. I appreciate you having me on
and supporting this book.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
In this work, I think what you're doing is amazing.
Tell us a little bit about Project Baltimore, which has
become I think one of the most impactful local reporting
initiatives in the entire country. How did Fox forty five
decide to launch it and what was your original vision
for the project?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So is twenty seventeen and I was an investigative reporter
working for WJLA, which is the ABC News affiliate in Washington, DC,
and the ownership of Sinclair had this idea of creating
a five person unit to only investigate public education. And
the reason that they chose public education is because nothing
(02:33):
seemed to make any sense. So if you look at
census data, you have a bunch of federal data that
you can look at and you can see that for
years and decades, Baltimore City Public Schools was one of
the most funded large school systems in America, but yet
it was also one of the lowest performing. So how
(02:55):
are we pumping billions of dollars into the school system
and the student outcomes are simply atrocious? So to talk
about what was happening right now? Twenty twenty four, which
is the most recent full school year for which we
have data because it generally lags a year. In twenty
twenty four, Baltimore City Schools had a one point seven
(03:18):
billion dollar budget and ten percent of the students who
were tested scored proficient in math. Ninety percent of the
kids in this school system were not proficient in math,
and taxpayers are giving the school system one point seven
billion dollars. How can that happen? Why is that allowed
(03:40):
to happen? Why are people in Baltimore City, specifically the
public officials, the mayor of the governor, city council, why
are they not screaming about the failed academic outcomes in
Baltimore City Public schools. Now, to go back to twenty seventeen,
eight years ago, it was the same exact situation. At
(04:02):
that point, there was one point three billion dollars that
was getting put into the school system, and the math
proficiencies were eleven percent. So you look over the past
eight years and you're seeing an increase in the amount
of money going to the school system from one point
three to one point seven billion dollars a year. So
(04:22):
the school system is getting four hundred million more dollars
a year, and they outcomes are nearly identical, if not
worse than they were eight years ago. That was the
intent of Project Baltimore to simply ask the question, how
do we continue to do the same thing over and
over again and it's leading to all the problems that
(04:45):
you're seeing in Baltimore. We're seeing President Trump right now
talking about sending troops into Baltimore to quell the violence
and the crime. And mister speaker, I would contend the
violence in crime is not the problem. It's a symptom
of the problem. The problem is that the kids in
the school system for decades have not been getting the
(05:06):
proper education. They don't have the English language arts proficiencies,
they don't have the math proficiencies, and they cannot properly
support their families. The school system is the problem.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Why is the school system so unwilling to modify and
change in response to this kind of data.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, when I first started Project Baltimore in twenty seventeen,
a lot of people had said to me, as you
start investigating this, what you're going to find out is
that the intent of the school system, the priority of
the school system is not to educate students. The priority
is to employ adults. And when I first heard that
(05:49):
back in twenty seventeen, I went to public schools, my
kids go to public schools. I didn't want to believe that.
It was hard for me to want to think that
a school system's priority is not the kids but rather
the adults. But eight years later, as we sit here
in twenty twenty five, and as I write this book,
Failure Factory, I think that that is the case. I
(06:10):
think that when you look at situations like what you're
seeing in Baltimore City, you see that the priority is
not necessarily educating the kids. And I'll give you a
data example for why that appears to be true in
many people's eyes. We have a school system in Baltimore
City that over eight years, has lost sixty five hundred
(06:32):
students in the enrollment. However, there's about thirteen hundred more
employees that are working in the school system. So you
have more employees and more money to educate fewer students,
and most of the academic outcomes are going in the
wrong direction. And when you see something like that, and
(06:54):
this is not a one year or two year snapshot,
this is an eight year snapshot, you have to look
at that and think to yourself, well, this is just
the intent. If it weren't the intent, it wouldn't be
that way. You would see that the additional money, you
would see that the additional employees would create better outcomes
(07:15):
for the students. But they're not. It's going in the
opposite direction. And then there's no accountability. There is nobody
in this school system. There is nobody who's a public
official representing Baltimore City that is saying this is not acceptable.
These numbers don't make sense. Why are ten percent of
(07:35):
our kids proficient in math when we have thirteen hundred
additional employees over the past eight years. What are those
employees doing. Why are the students not achieving more? And
to go back to your original question, it's because the
school system appears to have been valuing the number of
(07:56):
adults that they are employing, and those adults making very
healthy salaries over the education of the students in the
school system.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
When you talk to them, if you're one of these
adults and you are being paid to preside over abject failure,
I mean, how do you cope with that? How do
you explain it to yourself?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Many of them come to me and they explain it
to me. What I'm telling you is not necessarily my words.
What I'm telling you are the words of the people
that I've interviewed inside Baltimore City schools, high level administrators, teachers,
the people that are working in the system. This is
what they're telling me. And I think that a majority
(08:37):
of the people in that school system are good, honest,
hardworking people. But when they come to me, they want
to be anonymous. They don't want to give their names
because they don't want to lose their jobs. And we
have seen that when people inside the school system hold
the school system accountable by publicly going to the media
(08:57):
or publicly going on social media or sites like that,
there is retribution against them because there's a lot of money,
mister speaker, this is one point seven billion dollars and
people want part of that money. We can see over
the eight years, and I have this data in Failure
(09:18):
Factory that director level positions in Baltimore City Public schools.
In those eight years, the salary has increased by twenty
one percent. Ten percent of students are proficient in math.
You look at administrative positions, they've increased by twenty percent
of their salaries and there's many more of them. As
(09:41):
the school system is decreasing in enrollment, it's adding administrators,
is adding director level positions. And all of these positions
are six figure salaries where people are making a lot
of money. So the people inside the school system that
get the pensions, that get those six figure salaries, they
don't want to lose them. And I understand that as
(10:02):
someone who has a family, I get it you don't
want to lose them. But somebody outside of that system
has to hold them accountable and say, if you're going
to get this money and we're going to hire all
these people, we better have better student outcomes. And that
part is not what's happening. And that's why I wrote
Failure Factory, because people need to know what's going on,
(10:23):
especially in these large urban school systems, because of that mindset.
I can see it in Maryland that mindset is seeping
out into the counties, and it's seeping out into the
rural areas of America.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Part of what I'm struck by is that rather than
trying to fix it, they just tried to cover it up.
You indicate that there's an Inspector General report that more
than twelve thousand failing grades were improperly changed. They simply
gave them better grades so they would look better, even
though they couldn't do anything. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
So one of the administrators, high level administrators in North
Avenue and North Avenue is the administrative building for Baltimore
City Public Schools colloquially is called North Avenue. A high
level administrator told me that the school system is prioritizing data,
like you had mentioned in the open to this podcast,
they're prioritizing the data over the success of the students.
(11:37):
And what that means is when students aren't passing, we
have seen and we know that, they simply change the
failing grades to passing. So why would they do that.
They do that because it increases the pass rate at
the schools. Because if you have a pass rate that
is low, there's a higher chance for these students to
(12:01):
be dropping out. And when a student drops out, the
school system no longer gets the funding for that student
because funding levels are based on a per pupil basis.
So the whole thing wraps around data equaling money. And
if you can keep these kids enroll and you can
keep them passing despite if they get the proper education,
(12:24):
the schools keep the money coming in. I spoke with
a teacher who is in this book, who actually gave
us her name, by the way, and doesn't work for
the school system anymore. Coincidentally, she said that the school
systems are not focused on educating kids. They're focused on
passing kids. Get them to the next grade, get them
(12:45):
from second to third grade, get them from eight to
ninth grade. And then we talk to other teachers who
have said, and we know this is true, that Baltimore
City Schools has graduated kids who can't read. You literally
give them a diploma that they cannot read. It sounds
like hyperbole, but that is where the situation actually is.
So how does that happen? How does the kid get
(13:07):
to high school and they can't read. It happens because
you're passing them along because the focus is on passing,
as a teacher said, not educating the students. It's about
the data.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
One of these samples you use is a student who
in four years earned a grade point average of zero
point one three. He only passed three classes, but his
class rank was sixty two out of one twenty. That
means and that half of his classmate's fifty eight of
them had a zero point one three grade point average
(13:42):
or lower.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yep, that's true.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I mean he's going to graduate with no ability to
get a job or hold a job down, or figure
out how check book or do any of a thousand
things you have to do in the modern world. How
do they rationalize it to themselves?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
That's why I wrote this book, mister speaker, because I
don't know how do you have a situation like that?
And that school is still open. There are still hundreds
of kids that go to that school. That school was
Augusta Fells Savage. It's a high school where we found
this student. His mom had come to us because he
was in that school for four years and he was
(14:16):
still a freshman. He was a freshman after four years
because he had only passed a few classes and he
had a zero point one three GPA, which placed him
in the middle of his class. These are the stories
that are in failure factory. These are the stories that
people need to know because that's real. What are those
other kids supposed to do? As you mentioned, what kind
(14:39):
of jobs can they get? And that's why I go
back to the crime and violence in Baltimore is not
the problem, it's the symptom. The problem is schools like
Augusta Fells. And Augusta Fells is not alone. There are
other schools in Baltimore City that have very similar academic outcomes.
For these students, they don't go to school, they don't
get an education, but they keep moving their way through
(15:02):
the grades. In the book, we talk about one high
school where I got some data that is not made public,
but one of the administrators at the school, again a
good person who sees something wrong and wants to blow
the whistle, had sent me data concerning reading scores of
this school and this high school. Seventy five percent of
the kids we're reading at an elementary school level. I
(15:26):
think it was ten or twenty percent of the kids
we're reading at a first or second grade level. You
hear that and you shake your head and you think,
how can that happen? And that's what failure factory is
pointing out, how can this happen? And quite frankly, it
happens because it's allowed to Because no one in Baltimore
City is screaming. No public official is screaming for better results.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Why aren't the parents screaming? They are?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
They come to us in the book, we talk to
a lot of parents, and the problem is that you
have a one point seven billion dollar school system that
squashes people. And if you're a mom, you're a single mom,
you have two or three kids, you have two or
three jobs, you make thirty thousand and thirty five thousand
(16:13):
dollars a year. How are you supposed to go up
against a one point seven billion dollar school system that
has extremely well paid attorneys. You can't. You simply can't.
So parents feel powerless, They feel like they don't have
any way to get their message out, and that is
when they call Project Baltimore. And these are the parents
(16:35):
that I speak to in the book that are telling
me that their kids failing grades are being changed to passing.
They want their student held back to better learn the material,
but the school system passes them anyway. And when they
try to push back, there's only so much they can
do because they don't have the resources, they don't have
the money, they can't hire attorneys, and quite frankly, they're
(16:57):
just trying to survive. They're trying to in a city
that is not giving them the services, specifically the education
that they need. And if I can just make one
more point about the parent situation here. When we started
Project Baltimore in twenty seventeen, I was of the mindset,
where are the parents, Why aren't the parents doing more?
(17:21):
And eight years later, you know, after we talk about,
you know, writing the book Failure Factory, I don't have
that mindset anymore because I've now spent eight years speaking
to the parents who won something better for their kids.
But many of these parents went to the same school
system that their kids now go to. And many of
(17:41):
the parents, if not most of them, are also under
educated by this same school system that their kids now
go to. There's a woman in the book, her name's
Michelle Bradley, and she can't read. She made it to
high school in Baltimore City schools, she cannot read, and
now she has two daughters in the school system. How
(18:02):
is she supposed to help those kids? How is she
supposed to help them with their homework when she herself
went to the school system and she can't read. The
parents are not getting one point seven billion dollars. The
school system is getting one point seven billion dollars. And
that money is not predicated on the conditions of the
(18:23):
students that they leave when they walk into that school
house door. That money is intended to educate every child,
no matter their home environment, and if the school systems
cannot educate them, the school system should perhaps give the
money back. But that part never happens. The schools get
the money, the kids go into the school, they don't
(18:43):
get an education, and it's just year in and year
out of the same thing, over and over again.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I remember years ago when Governor came into Jersey took
over the Newark school system and put it into state receivership.
Why have the governors and the state governments not responded
to this clearly dysfunctional and destructive school system.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That is an outstanding question, and it also goes back
to why I wrote this book, Failure Factory. I cannot
get answers. What you get is from many of the
elected officials that are in this city is you get
historical underfunding. You get redlining, you get racism, you get
(19:32):
white flight, you get all these reasons for why the
school system is not progressing and why the students are
not achieving. What you don't get is an actual answer,
and you don't often get school systems that are being
held accountable by the officials that are there to give
the school system money and then make sure that the
(19:52):
money is spent appropriately. Let me give you this little
titive information. The only Republican that has any jurisdiction at
all over Baltimore City is President Trump and then Vice
President JD.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Vance.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
The two state senators in Maryland that have jurisdiction over
Baltimore City are Democrats. Every US House and representative member
that has jurisdiction in Baltimore is a Democrat. The governor,
every state level position Democrat. Every state House and state
senator that has jurisdiction over Baltimore is a Democrat. Every
(20:31):
elected local official in Baltimore City is a Democrat. So
what you have here is complete one party rule. The
only Republican that has anything any jurisdiction at all over
Baltimore is President Trump. So it's kind of like an
echo chamber. I go to the governor he's a Democrat.
I go to the comptroller, he's a Democrat, the mayor,
(20:53):
the president of city Council. I go to Angel also Brooks,
I go to Chris van holl and the two senators.
They're all Democrats, and they all say the same thing.
They point to the same issues of why the school
system isn't doing better, and it's just the same thing
every year in and year out, despite the data that
we report that we're talking about right now.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
So there's talk that your current governor, Wes Moore, is
a potential candidate for president. I would think that what
you're describing in your book becomes an unbelievable liability for him.
How does he explain this?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I think he's going to explain it the way that
I just explained it. He's going to talk about historical racism.
He's going to talk about underfunding. He's going to talk
about redlining, he's going to talk about white right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
How do you with a straight face take the third
or fourth most expensive school district in the country and
explain that it's a function of underfunding.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
They're going to say, and this is what they do,
say that if you look at the sixties, the seventies,
the eighties, the nineties. Now you're right. For the pasts,
I'm going to say fifteen to twenty years, Baltimore City
has been one of the most funded school systems in America.
I don't know what the funding looks like prior to that,
because the data that I'm getting is US Census data,
(22:09):
is federal data. But they're going to say that it's
historically underfunded, even though that historical underfunding was generations ago.
That is their argument for why the school system isn't
doing better now. However, for the past ten years, Baltimore
City has been in the top five. It's one of
the top five most funded school systems in America. And
(22:32):
we've already gone over the results.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I mean, one of the things you mentioned, which I've
always been fascinated by is the existence of what are
basically ghost students. I think this is a fascinating example
of the found dishonesty of the system.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So the way that schools are funded in Baltimore and
throughout America is that you get money based on the
number of students who are enrolled, and if you have
more students who are enrolled, you get more money. And
over the eight years that we've been doing Project Baltimore,
and this is one of the bigger themes in the
book is that the school system in many instances inflates
(23:26):
their enrollment to get more money. Now we know this
is happening. This is not anecdotal. We absolutely know this happening.
We first broke this story probably about four years ago
that there was a school that had students that were
enrolled in the school for two or three years that
(23:48):
were not attending the school. We had administrators inside of
that school that were anonymous, of course didn't want to
come forward, but they were leaking the information about students
in that school that were not actually there, and they
gave me their addresses. So we went out one day
when we started knocking on doors and we were asking
(24:08):
them when was the last time that you were in
Baltimore City schools? And they would say two years, three years,
And I'm like, you're enrolled. Who's enrolling you? And they
would look at the data because I had their transcripts.
The transcripts were being given to me and they would say,
I don't know who's enrolling me. It's not me, mister speaker.
I found a student who was in jail and enrolled
(24:33):
in Baltimore City Public schools. He got out of jail.
I went and found him and I spoke with him,
and I said, where have you been? He goes, I
was incarcerated. He was dealing drugs, and I was like,
have you been to school? He goes, I haven't been
to school since twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen, and somebody was
enrolling him, getting sixteen seventeen, eighteen thousand dollars a year
(24:56):
from taxpayers to educate a student who is in jail.
Now you want to talk about taxpayer abuse. Taxpayers are
funding this person in jail, and they're also funding this
person to be educated in a school that they're not at.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I mean, isn't it just playing fraud?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I don't understand how no one has been charged criminally
for this.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I don't know what percent of the school's funding is federal,
but I suspect there's a direct federal interest in this
money being paid out for things that aren't happening, which
is just playing fraud.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It's between eight and ten percent, So eight and ten
percent of Baltimore City Schools funding is federal moneies.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And then the rest of us is being funded by
the people of Baltimore and Maryland, so they also have
a fraud claim. Now you have really been courageous and
determined and very smart and walk us through this. You
end up in this amazing court case where the school
district basically at one point just rejects the judge's orders.
(25:56):
At the end of all this, the judge forces the
school district to reimb Fox forty five legal fees about
two hundred thousand dollars by itself. This is a great story,
So walk us through that.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
In twenty seventeen is when I first had teachers coming
to me because that's when we launched, and they were
saying that their grades were being changed and that there
were kids that were graduating who they had failed in
courses required to graduate and they couldn't understand why these
kids were graduating getting diplomas, and it was because their
grades were being changed. So I filed a public records
(26:30):
request with Baltimore City Public Schools, which, as an investigative reporter,
is something that I do and so a lot are
the main functions of my job. And Baltimore City Schools
wrote me back and said, we're not going to give
you anything. And I'm like, what do you mean, You're
not going to give me anything. You're telling me that
emails and internal investigations into grade changing is not public record,
(26:52):
and they're like, we're not giving you anything. And I
was like, all right. So we sued them, and we
went to court and I testified for a few hours
on the stand in front of Judge Genie Hong, who's
a Baltimore City judge, and she ruled in our favor
on all eight counts that were discussed into lawsuit, and
she said Baltimore City Public Schools willfully and knowingly violated
(27:17):
the law by not handing over the documents that I
had requested. She said that they knew that they were
violating the law by not releasing public documents, but they
did it anyway. She then forced them to pay our
legal fees fox forty five legal fees of roughly two
hundred thousand dollars, and then she forced them to hand
over all the documents that we had requested, and it
(27:40):
turned out that there was a lot more documents than
they had originally told us concerning great changing investigations and
emails from teachers that were begging the school system to
stop changing their grades. And it was because of that
lawsuit and winning that lawsuit that we got a large
amount of the documents in Failure Factory that led to
(28:01):
the creation of Failure Factory because we saw how pervasive
grade changing was in Baltimore City Public Schools. And it again,
it goes back to the data. It goes back to
making the schools look better than they are, to keep
the kids in school, to keep the money train flowing.
That's what this all comes back to.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
How much is the highest paid person in the Baltimore
school system.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
So that is the CEO. Baltimore City Schools does not
have a superintendent. They have a CEO and her total
compensation is five hundred thousand dollars right around there now,
five hundred thousand dollars for ten percent of students who
are proficient in math. And she has been doctor Sony
(28:47):
Santalisis is her name. She has been the CEO of
Baltimore City Schools the entire eight years that this book
covers everything that we have talked about, mister Speaker on
your podcast, knowingly and willfully breaking the law ghost students
grade changing. All of this stuff happened with the same
person in charge, and that person has one hundred percent
(29:11):
support from the public officials in Baltimore. The mayor fully
supports her, the president of City Council fully supports her.
Every council member, to my knowledge, no one's calling for
her to resign the governor. She's been there for eight
years total compensation.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And is that in part just a function of how
much money the school district has. In the fact that
it's not rational for the local politicians to take her on.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I think that when you have a one party rule
echo chamber in Baltimore, which we discussed just a few
minutes ago, who's going to break ranks with that? And
you don't see anybody breaking ranks with that. When Governor
Larry Hogan was here, and he was a two term
Republican governor who left three years ago, he did speak
(29:57):
out a lot against Baltimore City Public School, but he
was really the lone voice, and he was a singular
Republican who had jurisdiction over the city. There's no other
Republican that had jurisdiction over the city. He was the
only one, and he spoke out a lot against it,
and he got hammered for it. People called him a racist.
You know what the climate was like three or four
(30:19):
years ago, and he tried. He said a lot of things.
I interview him a lot. He called for criminal investigations,
he called it fraud when the enrollment numbers were being falsified,
but nothing ever came of it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
One of the things you noted in passing is that
despite the groundbreaking research he were doing and the investigative reporting,
the other three TV stations in the Baltimore Sun all
have sort of avoided this issue. Why do you think that.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Is, Well, the Baltimore Sun is under new ownership now
and they have taken full stake in these issues, so
they have now picked it up. But the Baltimore Sun
under the prior ownership, they ignored it. The television stations
ignored it. And I think that it was a detriment
to certainly the kids in Baltimore City schools that are
(31:12):
being under educated, as a detriment to their parents. But unfortunately,
we live in a very hyper competitive media world, and
a lot of the local television stations and the Baltimore
Sun at the time, they weren't interested in picking up
a story that Fox forty five in Project Baltimore and
Chris PABs were doing, and if you think about it,
(31:34):
it's really hard to wrap your head around that because
when you have inflated enrollment. At one point, mister speaker,
after we had done a number of stories on inflated
enrollment at just one school, Baltimore City Schools had to
refund state taxpayers three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
students that were enrolled who should not have been enrolled
(31:55):
at one school. They had to give back three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, and the other media entities in
this town did not cover it because it was instigated
by Fox forty five in Project Baltimore's investigative reporting. It's
stunning really. However, with the Son's new ownership, that has changed,
so there are more media entities now in Baltimore. They're saying, hey,
(32:18):
one point seven billion dollars, ten percent math for efficiencies.
Maybe we should report on this too.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Look, I think your book is important, not only in
describing Baltimore, and I think it'll be a major major
problem for the governor if he decides to run, because
this book indicates that on his watch, the city of
Baltimore is just failing and it's failing the children, it's
failing their future. But in addition, it seems to me
(32:44):
this book creates a frame of reference for other cities
and for other investigative reporters, and frankly, for the legislatures
and the Congress to look at the patterns and habits
that have grown up because you have bureaucracies who care
more about the money than they care about the children,
and they're so powerful in their community that they can't
(33:07):
be reformed from with them. This is why what President
Trump's doing is so groundbreaking, because you can't inside Chicago
take on the Chicago system. It's just too big, too powerful.
People won't do it. And yet, much like Baltimore, it
is cheating thousands of people and creating future nightmares for us.
When we have citizens who can't get a job, can't read,
(33:29):
can't understand the issues. It's a real challenge. The best
of my knowledge, you are the most knowledgeable pioneer in
investigating all this and laying it out. And I think
that your book Failure Factory. How Baltimore City public schools
deprive taxpayers and students of the future is literally in
(33:50):
the tradition of the Great muck rakers in the early
nineteen hundreds, and I hope that it will be one
of the things which triggers an awareness that we have
to fundamentally rethink our big cities, rethink the machines, rethink
the teachers' unions, and get back to serving people, having
them live in safety, having them go to schools that
actually succeed, and having them in the environments where jobs
(34:13):
can be created. And Chris, you are, as much as
any single person in the country, a genuine pioneer and
developing this and your work, which I know has to
be exhausting and time consuming, but your work is a
real contribution to the entire country.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Mister speaker, I'm honored, thank you.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I want to thank you for the work you've done.
I want to thank you for joining me. I look
forward to having you back in the future. And I'm
going to do everything I can to help communicate that
Failure Factory is a vital book describing a phenomenon. It's
not just Baltimore City, but it's around the country, and
it's one of the things weakening America and we have
to address it. So thank you very much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Thank you anytime I'd be happy to come on and
speak with you. I think that our cities cannot survive
if our school systems are failing. Baltimore City School System
is certainly failing.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Thank you to my guest Chris Papst. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Failure Factory on
our show page at newsworld dot com. Newtworld is produced
by Gangwish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is
Guarnsei Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(35:25):
to the team at Gangwish three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three freeweekly
columns at gagwischtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm neute gingrich.
(35:47):
This is Newtsworld.
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