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Is Your Kid’s School a Failure Factory? Chris Papst on Failing Schools and Why Common Sense Left the Building (+ 3 Ways to Reclaim Your Child’s Future) · The Literacy Keys - Dyslexia resources and structured literacy tips by an Orton Gillingham tutor

• 0:00
  Why would you pass Michelle Bradley?
• 0:02
  Why would you pass the student that you're talking about who's
• 0:05
  reading at a third grade level and give them a diploma?
• 0:07
  And the answer is simple. The answer is money.
• 0:10
  And one of the things that I didn't realize in 2017 when I
• 0:14
  started this job, and is when I did realize it, it was one of
• 0:18
  the main things that convinced me to write this book, is school
• 0:23
  systems do not receive money to educate kids.
• 0:26
  That is not why they get money. The incentive is to enroll the
• 0:31
  child, not educate them. Well, hello everyone and welcome
• 0:43
  to the Literacy Keys. We are excited today or today's
• 0:50
  host that we have Chris Pappst who has recently written a book,
• 0:56
  The Failure Factory. Now I know that many of our
• 0:59
  listeners are parents of dyslexic ADHD kids and we have
• 1:06
  seen how the school system, public education has sometimes
• 1:11
  failed our students. And so Chris has a very
• 1:16
  interesting perspective that he is going to share with us.
• 1:20
  And that's why I thought this was relevant and vital
• 1:24
  information that everyone needs to know.
• 1:27
  So welcome, Chris. Well.
• 1:29
  Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.
• 1:32
  Absolutely. So we're excited to just kind of
• 1:35
  dive right in. My first question is how did
• 1:39
  this book come about? Sure.
• 1:41
  So in 2016, and I was an investigative reporter working
• 1:47
  for the ABC News affiliate in Washington, DC, And I got a call
• 1:52
  from the company that owns that station, which is Sinclair
• 1:55
  Broadcast Group. And they reached out and they
• 1:58
  said we're, we're going to start this new thing called Project
• 2:01
  Baltimore at our Fox affiliate, Fox 45 in Baltimore.
• 2:05
  Do you want to be part of it? And So what Project Baltimore
• 2:08
  is, is that we're a team of five.
• 2:11
  We're 2 producers, 2 photographer editors, and myself
• 2:14
  is the reporter. And we started in January of
• 2:18
  2017. And what we do is we focus on
• 2:21
  one topic. And for the past nine years and
• 2:24
  a couple months, we've been focusing on one topic and that
• 2:27
  is all that we report on it. It's it, the idea was, it's sort
• 2:30
  of like a return to the, the local investigative journalist
• 2:34
  beat reporters from 30 or 40 years ago.
• 2:37
  And that was kind of the idea. And it was an idea that we
• 2:40
  launched in 2017 and it was a great success and we're still
• 2:43
  doing it today. And the one topic that we chose
• 2:46
  to cover was public education. And the reason we chose public
• 2:51
  education was because at the time we could see, and this is
• 2:56
  specific to Baltimore City, that according to federal data in
• 3:00
  2017, Baltimore City Schools was one of the most funded, but one
• 3:04
  of the lowest performing large school systems in America.
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  And it had been that way for many, many years.
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  And that is why we chose to pick Baltimore City.
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  Now, nine years later, we've expanded and Project Baltimore
• 3:19
  covers public education throughout the state of
• 3:21
  Maryland. But after nine years, I wrote
• 3:23
  Failure Factory. Because what we have uncovered
• 3:27
  in these nine years, there's a most all of it is what I didn't
• 3:32
  know in 2017 about public education after devoting, you
• 3:36
  know, 50 hours a week of my professional life into doing
• 3:39
  this. And I wrote the book because I
• 3:41
  figured that if I didn't know a lot of these things, that
• 3:45
  there's a lot of other people that don't know a lot of these
• 3:47
  things about how the school systems are actually run and
• 3:50
  what the incentive structure is and where the money is going and
• 3:54
  how data is manipulated and how kids are graduating who can't
• 3:58
  read. How does that happen?
• 4:00
  Well, Failure Factory tells you how all that is happening.
• 4:04
  And I think you hit upon a word system.
• 4:08
  It's like schools have become institutions where it's they
• 4:14
  have a life of their own. So making change in in
• 4:18
  everything else becomes impossible or next to
• 4:22
  impossible. Common sense just doesn't seem
• 4:25
  to be there. So making the change is
• 4:28
  certainly harder. And the reason it's harder is
• 4:32
  because we have created a system where a lot of people are making
• 4:36
  a lot of money. And those people don't want the
• 4:39
  system to change because they're making very healthy 6 figure
• 4:43
  salaries. They have good pensions, they
• 4:45
  have their summers off, they have their their weekends and
• 4:48
  holidays off. They have very good healthcare,
• 4:50
  all of which we're paying for. So what what we've sort of done
• 4:54
  as taxpayers is that we have created this behemoth that in
• 4:59
  many ways is serving itself before it's serving us and our
• 5:03
  kids. And it's it's sort of gotten out
• 5:05
  of control. And the point of failure factory
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  is to educate people, to put us back in control, put the parents
• 5:13
  back in control, put taxpayers back in control.
• 5:17
  Absolutely. And that's one of the phenomena
• 5:19
  that that we are seeing across the nation is parents are
• 5:23
  pulling their kids out. If you look at the percentages
• 5:28
  of homeschooling, it is on the rise now perhaps.
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  And everyone will say, well, yes, but that's because of
• 5:34
  COVID. There's more going on here.
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  And let's I have a couple of questions for you because I
• 5:42
  think they really get at some of the issues that you have
• 5:47
  uncovered for that. And I think that before I even
• 5:50
  ask the questions, one of the things if we really think about
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  what schools were established to, we had an urban population
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  and we needed factory workers. So we needed to be able to
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  educate them to a level that they could be productive members
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  in an industrialized system or society.
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  We moved from agricultural based to industrial based, and then
• 6:22
  somewhere along the line, things started going wrong.
• 6:27
  So let's say one of the things I'd love if you could talk a
• 6:30
  little bit about Michelle Bradley.
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  Now, here is a parent who couldn't read in the ninth
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  grade, graduated, and then, Oh my goodness, all of a sudden, lo
• 6:43
  and behold, at 39, she discovers that she's dyslexic.
• 6:48
  So could you tell me a little bit about that?
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  So what Failure Factory is, is it's a book about the nine years
• 6:54
  that we've been covering Baltimore City schools and
• 6:56
  Maryland schools. And the, the way that I really
• 7:00
  formulate the book is I'm showing you data and I'm using
• 7:03
  the data to show you what is really going on in the school
• 7:08
  systems. Because often times when we look
• 7:10
  at school data, we look at it one year and then three years
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  later we see something and then five years later we see
• 7:16
  something. Well, this is a long term study
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  looking at all the data over 9 years.
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  And when you look at that, it is really alarming As for how much
• 7:25
  money is going in and what the parents and students are getting
• 7:28
  in return as far as academic outcomes.
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  And what makes Failure Factory different than a lot of other
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  books about education is that I interview the people who make up
• 7:38
  the data. And Michelle Bradley is one of
• 7:40
  those people. And she had reached out to us
• 7:45
  because she was watching our Project Baltimore reports.
• 7:48
  And she had said that, you know, she made it to high school in
• 7:53
  Baltimore City Schools and she can't read.
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  And she now has two kids that are attending Baltimore City
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  Schools. And, you know, as I'm doing this
• 8:03
  book tour and as I'm talking to people about Failure factory, a
• 8:07
  lot of people blame parents. And I understand that.
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  And, and parents are obviously hugely influential in, in their,
• 8:16
  in their child's upbringing and their education.
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  But most people don't understand what's going on in many of our
• 8:25
  inner City Schools like Baltimore where you have a
• 8:28
  parent, a single parent like Michelle Bradley who cannot
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  read. How is she supposed to help her
• 8:35
  kids with their homework? How is she supposed to try to
• 8:39
  make sure that they are not going to repeat the cycle of
• 8:43
  poverty that has has that Michelle is stuck in?
• 8:47
  You know, in the book, you know, I go into detail about where she
• 8:51
  lived and she was in a very struggling section of a
• 8:57
  struggling city, Baltimore. You know, she lived in
• 9:01
  government housing, the type of government housing that very few
• 9:04
  people are actually aware exists where she can't even open
• 9:08
  windows because they're, they're shut, they're screwed shut,
• 9:11
  where she can't control her own thermostat.
• 9:15
  You know, and a lot of people that like to blame parents, I
• 9:17
  would like to take them to, to visit somebody like Michelle
• 9:20
  Bradley where the, the, the only thing she can really do is to
• 9:24
  make sure her kids go to school, which they did.
• 9:27
  But once her kids are in that school, if they're not receiving
• 9:30
  the proper education, Michelle can't help them.
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  And she didn't get the proper education.
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  So her children are now attending the same schools that
• 9:38
  undereducated her. And there are thousands or 10s
• 9:42
  of thousands of parents in Baltimore City.
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  And we talked to many of them in Failure Factory that are living
• 9:48
  that life. And Michelle didn't get
• 9:50
  diagnosed, as you mentioned, with dyslexia until she was 39.
• 9:54
  The school system kept pushing her through, pushing her
• 9:57
  through, pushing her through until she got to high school and
• 10:00
  she can't read and then she drops out.
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  And what are the chances that she has to have a a successful
• 10:05
  life monetarily and professionally?
• 10:07
  It's it's greatly diminished. And, you know, did the school
• 10:11
  system just not care to try to diagnose her dyslexia?
• 10:14
  Did they not try to? Or is there not an incentive
• 10:18
  structure in a public school system to even do that?
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  And for Michelle, she was failed.
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  She was part of the failure factory, and she's desperately
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  hoping that her children are not.
• 10:28
  Right, because we as parents put trust in schools that they are
• 10:34
  going to do one thing and that is teach kids how to read.
• 10:38
  And unfortunately what you just described, I mean, I'm an Norton
• 10:42
  Gillingham tutor and last year I was tutoring a student who was
• 10:47
  actually graduated. They graduated the student who
• 10:50
  could not read above a third grade level and I was then
• 10:56
  tutoring them intensively to make up for what the school
• 11:01
  should have done. So like, do kids?
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  Are they held back anymore? Like what happens?
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  What did you find out there? It's, it's very rare that a
• 11:13
  child is held back. And you may ask, you know, if a
• 11:16
  child isn't mastering the material in a grade, why would a
• 11:21
  school push that child on to the next grade?
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  Because if they're behind in 3rd grade, they're going to be
• 11:26
  farther behind in fourth, farther behind in 5th, farther
• 11:29
  behind in 6th. And the one thing that we've
• 11:32
  noticed in the nine years that we've been doing Project
• 11:34
  Baltimore and what the book really tries to relay to to
• 11:38
  readers is that all you have to do is follow the money.
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  The money will answer why school systems do what they do.
• 11:45
  So why would you push a kid through?
• 11:47
  Why would you pass Michelle Bradley?
• 11:49
  Why would you pass the student that you're talking about who's
• 11:52
  reading at a third grade level and give them a diploma?
• 11:54
  And the answer is simple. The answer is money.
• 11:57
  And one of the things that I didn't realize in 2017 when I
• 12:01
  started this job and is when I did realize it, it was one of
• 12:05
  the main things that convinced me to write this book is school
• 12:10
  systems. And just hear me out here as I
• 12:12
  say this, school systems do not receive money to educate kids.
• 12:17
  That is not why they get money. They get money to enroll kids.
• 12:23
  A school's incentive is to enroll a child, not educate a
• 12:29
  child. When that concept was first
• 12:32
  proposed to me, it was really hard to believe, but it's true.
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  And that is how Maryland works, and that is how many states, if
• 12:40
  not all states around this country, work.
• 12:43
  The incentive is to enroll the child, not educate them.
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  And that is why many kids like the one you mentioned or
• 12:51
  Michelle Bradley or the many kids I interview in this book,
• 12:54
  why it's still happening today. Because if you continue to push
• 12:58
  a child through who is not receiving the education, that
• 13:02
  child is still more likely to stay enrolled because they're
• 13:05
  going to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
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  And that light is called a high school diploma.
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  Even if they cannot read the diploma that is being handed to
• 13:14
  them, the school system still gets the money.
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  Now I interview teachers in this book that tell me they have
• 13:23
  graduated students who cannot read the diploma that was given
• 13:27
  to them. And it happens.
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  And all you have to do is follow the money for the reason.
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  Now is this state money, federal money?
• 13:37
  Both because is the state evaluated on the percentage that
• 13:43
  they have enrolled. So the way that a school system
• 13:45
  is structured, Baltimore City, for example.
• 13:48
  Now Baltimore City is a little different because Baltimore City
• 13:50
  in in Maryland is about 70% funded by the state, 20% funded
• 13:57
  by Baltimore City, and about 10% funded by the federal
• 14:01
  government. Most schools in Maryland and
• 14:04
  most schools around the country are not funded to those
• 14:07
  extremes. So many of the school systems
• 14:09
  are in in this area are more like 50% local, 40% state, and
• 14:18
  then 10% federal government. But usually the federal
• 14:22
  government makes up between 8 and 10% of a school system's
• 14:25
  funding. So when a child is enrolled, you
• 14:29
  know, they're they're getting money from the state, the local
• 14:33
  and the federal government. And to the extent that this is
• 14:36
  happening and that school systems are only worried about
• 14:39
  enrolling kids, there's a story that I tell in Failure Factory
• 14:42
  where we found a student who was in jail and somebody was
• 14:48
  enrolling him in school. Now think about that for a
• 14:51
  second. So now you have taxpayers that
• 14:54
  are paying to keep somebody in jail and paying a school to
• 14:59
  educate a child who is not there.
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  So this was part of a larger enrollment go.
• 15:07
  We called them ghost students, a larger ghost student
• 15:09
  investigation that we had done that takes up a few years of
• 15:12
  this book. And after we did these
• 15:14
  investigations and we proved that there were many, many kids,
• 15:19
  thousands statewide that were being falsely enrolled.
• 15:24
  There were no criminal charges. Nobody to my understanding ever
• 15:28
  went to jail or was ever put in handcuffs.
• 15:31
  But to make an argument that that's theft of taxpayer
• 15:34
  dollars, I think is a really strong argument to make.
• 15:37
  But the way that the laws are written surrounding public
• 15:41
  education is the incentive is it to enroll the kid?
• 15:45
  And if you get, let's say, caught, we'll use the word
• 15:48
  caught falsely enrolling people. It's usually just seen as some
• 15:53
  sort of sloppy bookkeeping and then everybody just moves on.
• 15:58
  Interesting, interesting. Now another question that I have
• 16:03
  is you talk about Ieps and so that's definitely of interest to
• 16:09
  our listeners because many of the children or the parents have
• 16:15
  children with Ieps. Talk to me a little bit about
• 16:19
  what you uncovered or what you saw related to special
• 16:24
  education, Ieps, and so forth. Well, overall, it's an absolute
• 16:28
  mess and it's sad and it's discouraging and it's
• 16:33
  frustrating. And for Project Baltimore, we
• 16:38
  have a tip line and we encourage people to reach out to us.
• 16:42
  And that's how we get a lot of our reports that are in this
• 16:44
  book. And a lot of the people that I
• 16:45
  talked to, the parents, the students, the educators, the
• 16:48
  administrators, a lot of them reach out to us through our tip
• 16:51
  line. And the the two most common
• 16:56
  concerns that we get in public education is violence, bullying,
• 17:01
  things like that. And two is Ieps, that they're
• 17:05
  not being followed and they're not being honored.
• 17:08
  And this is an enormous problem and so enormous.
• 17:13
  Just in August, just what was that?
• 17:16
  7-8 months ago we had done a series of stories in Prince
• 17:19
  George's County Public Schools and that's the second largest
• 17:22
  school system in Maryland, probably the 15th largest in
• 17:26
  America, Very large school system, I think around 150,000
• 17:29
  kids. And we had found because we were
• 17:32
  filing public records requests, that there were 80 students who
• 17:37
  in their Ieps required a one to one aid and did not have.
• 17:43
  And the reason we were doing these stories is because there
• 17:46
  was a student named Bowen Levy who required a one to one aid in
• 17:50
  his IEP, did not have one and ended up swallowing a glove at
• 17:54
  school and dying. And so that's what caused us to
• 17:57
  do this investigation. And we found that Prince
• 18:01
  George's County Schools, which has roughly a 3 1/2 billion
• 18:04
  dollar budget, was not hiring 1 to one aids for 80 kids that
• 18:09
  required them. We did the story.
• 18:13
  It got a lot of attention, obviously, as it should.
• 18:16
  Nobody was fired, nobody was held accountable, Just business
• 18:21
  as usual. Let's move on.
• 18:22
  And that's so often what we see in the schools is that they get
• 18:26
  the taxpayer money to deliver services for students with
• 18:29
  disabilities, but they don't deliver the services.
• 18:32
  And when they don't deliver those services, no one's held
• 18:35
  accountable. And and when you have a school
• 18:37
  system like like Prince George's County that's so big and so
• 18:40
  rich, they have very good attorneys.
• 18:43
  And what are parents supposed to do?
• 18:45
  Like, how are they supposed to go after the school system and
• 18:48
  try to hold a 3 1/2 billion dollar school system
• 18:52
  accountable, especially in a place like Prince George's
• 18:55
  County that has a lot of poverty, places like Baltimore
• 18:58
  City where 28% of the kids are living in poverty.
• 19:01
  And more than that, a lot of the parents are like Michelle
• 19:04
  Bradley that are drastically undereducated.
• 19:07
  What are they supposed to do? And the the answer is they can't
• 19:12
  do anything. And and that's what's really
• 19:14
  frustrating for me is that they reach out to me because I'm
• 19:17
  their only hope. And I'm not saying that with any
• 19:19
  type of pride. I'm saying that because it's sad
• 19:21
  actually, that the parents have to reach out to the media to get
• 19:25
  the story out there because the schools aren't held accountable.
• 19:30
  Nobody's holding them accountable, especially for
• 19:33
  students with disabilities. And what was the answer?
• 19:36
  I I and I will say that since COVID, I know that it is more
• 19:42
  difficult sometimes to hire aids because we don't pay them
• 19:47
  anything. It's really it's pitiful what
• 19:51
  they get paid for if. They have tough jobs.
• 19:56
  So what did this? Well, here's what happened.
• 19:59
  Was there an answer? Did the.
• 20:00
  School say anything? So I went to the the state
• 20:04
  Superintendent of schools. I went to the federal government
• 20:06
  because this is IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities
• 20:10
  Education Act that they're violating.
• 20:13
  But the federal government doesn't investigate IDEA
• 20:16
  violations. The state does.
• 20:18
  That's that's always been that way.
• 20:21
  And so the federal government's like we can't do anything and
• 20:23
  the state government's like we can't do anything.
• 20:26
  We go to the local government and they just don't really care.
• 20:29
  So what happened was we just kept doing stories on it and
• 20:32
  essentially embarrassed them. And as we sit here today, all
• 20:35
  eighty of those kids now have one to one aids because we
• 20:40
  shined a spotlight on it and and we largely called the school
• 20:43
  system out and said, what are you doing?
• 20:46
  There's a dead kid in the school system right next to you because
• 20:50
  he didn't have a one to one aid and you're not doing it.
• 20:52
  But that's the but. But the problem is the problem
• 20:55
  got solved until they just do the same thing again.
• 20:59
  And someone's going to have to alert us about it or we're not
• 21:02
  going to know. And that's, and that's such.
• 21:04
  It's so sad and and it's so unfortunate.
• 21:07
  And the other thing that's important to note is that there
• 21:10
  was a state law that was drafted this legislative session in
• 21:14
  Annapolis in Maryland to force Prince George's County school to
• 21:19
  hire the one to one aids that are necessary.
• 21:21
  Now think about that for a second.
• 21:23
  There's a state law written for a school system to follow,
• 21:27
  federal law. I mean, wrap your head around
• 21:29
  that for a moment. Now, the law didn't pass.
• 21:32
  The law didn't even come up for a vote.
• 21:34
  Annapolis killed the bill. So a bill was actually put forth
• 21:39
  to hold a school system accountable, and the lawmakers
• 21:42
  in Annapolis didn't pass. It didn't even vote on it.
• 21:44
  It didn't even get a vote in committee.
• 21:46
  It was ignored. Right, because it would have
• 21:48
  been really expensive for them to follow the law.
• 21:52
  Amazing how things work, right? But they already have 3 1/2
• 21:56
  billion dollars. And you know, as we were doing
• 21:59
  these stories, we were talking to, to to people and Prince
• 22:03
  George's County where this was happening, they have a dedicated
• 22:08
  student with disability administrator, like a, a, a
• 22:12
  regional Superintendent or deputy Superintendent, something
• 22:16
  like that. That person makes probably as
• 22:19
  much money as 5 to 8, maybe 10-1 to 1 aides.
• 22:25
  And people were saying this person is not doing their job,
• 22:28
  so why don't we fire them, hire the aids with that money and
• 22:33
  then put it in. But that's so much of what we're
• 22:35
  seeing in public education is that the administrative state is
• 22:38
  gigantic. It is very top heavy.
• 22:41
  And a lot of the money isn't getting to the kids.
• 22:43
  And even the money that does get to the kids like we're talking
• 22:46
  about right now, there's, there's no accountability for
• 22:50
  how that money is spent. You know, unless there's
• 22:52
  somebody like me or someone like Project Baltimore that is
• 22:56
  willing to, to, to do media stories on this and put people
• 22:59
  on TV and on social media saying, hey, you know, what are
• 23:03
  you, what are you doing here? This isn't right.
• 23:04
  Correct like this is wrong? Absolutely.
• 23:07
  And shine a spotlight on it. So I always like to leave the
• 23:12
  listeners with a little bit of hope because at the end of the
• 23:17
  day, everyone is going through a journey and it's different for
• 23:22
  everyone. It has ups and downs, emotional
• 23:26
  highs and lows and everything else.
• 23:29
  But I think it's really important to offer a glimmer of
• 23:33
  hope. So is there anything that you
• 23:37
  could, after everything that you've investigated, there's got
• 23:40
  to be at least one thing that would offer a glimmer of hope
• 23:45
  that you could share with the listeners?
• 23:47
  There's a lot of hope, like public schools are struggling
• 23:51
  right now and, and we know that we we can see nationally and,
• 23:55
  and this book is Baltimore centric, but what's happening in
• 23:57
  Baltimore is happening throughout the entire country.
• 23:59
  And we know that we can see the data and we can see enrollment
• 24:02
  is going down, while the number of people employed in public
• 24:06
  schools, the amount of money going to public schools is
• 24:08
  drastically increasing, but student achievement is going
• 24:11
  down, right? There's a huge problem.
• 24:13
  But the hope is and, and what we are seeing is that this has been
• 24:17
  going on for so long and, and books like mine are educating a
• 24:22
  lot of people on what the problem is.
• 24:26
  And in many parts of the country, there are shifting
• 24:29
  attitudes, and we are seeing it. Arizona has three years ago,
• 24:35
  adopted universal school choice. Now, I'm not going to say that
• 24:38
  universal school choice is the absolute solution, but I do
• 24:42
  believe it's part of the solution.
• 24:45
  Florida has done the same thing. We're seeing drastic increases
• 24:49
  in states like Tennessee, I'm sorry, Mississippi, a lot of
• 24:52
  Southern states are, are, are making these changes a science
• 24:56
  of reading and, and all these other things where parents are
• 25:00
  fed up. As you mentioned, there's more
• 25:02
  home schooling because parents are pulling their kids out of
• 25:04
  public school. There's more kid.
• 25:07
  There's like the idea of micro schools and there's, there's
• 25:10
  generally more charter schools that are opening not in Maryland
• 25:13
  because Maryland doesn't like charter schools, but a lot of
• 25:16
  other states are doing that. In the the big beautiful bill
• 25:19
  that passed last year, there is a private school investment
• 25:24
  voucher that I believe 28 or 29 states have already opted into.
• 25:30
  And what that voucher does is that parents can apply for it
• 25:34
  and their tax write offs for the people that invest into it.
• 25:37
  Parents can apply for it. They can get a voucher that they
• 25:40
  can use for their child's education.
• 25:42
  It can be homeschooling, it can be private school, parochial
• 25:45
  school, Catholic school. It could be a charter school.
• 25:48
  You know, these ideas are starting are really starting to
• 25:52
  take root, especially in redder states where I am in bluer
• 25:56
  states, they're they're still clinging on to the model that's
• 26:00
  100 years old. And they don't they don't, they
• 26:02
  don't want to release that model.
• 26:03
  They don't want to get away from it.
• 26:05
  And it goes back to what we talked about about 20 minutes
• 26:07
  ago is because there's a lot of money in it and the people that
• 26:10
  are making that money, they want to keep making that money.
• 26:14
  But there is hope thing good things are happening.
• 26:18
  We're seeing it across the country.
• 26:21
  And by good things, I mean that parents are getting more options
• 26:26
  on on how their children are being educated.
• 26:29
  Michelle Bradley, she has no options in this state.
• 26:32
  She's she's stuck, she is absolutely stuck.
• 26:36
  Her children are stuck, but many other States and many other
• 26:39
  people are looking at that going, you know, we don't want
• 26:41
  that here. We want Michelle Bradley, We
• 26:43
  want the Michelle Bradleys of the world to be able to have
• 26:45
  options and it and it really just takes us, it takes voters,
• 26:49
  it takes taxpayers, it takes parents to vote for the people
• 26:53
  that want to see that change. And that's really all that it
• 26:58
  takes. It's not really that difficult.
• 27:00
  You got to, you got to be very, very conscientious of who your
• 27:04
  local administrators are. The local politicians, I should
• 27:08
  say, local school board. Pay attention to your local
• 27:11
  school board candidates. They are immensely important and
• 27:14
  valuable. Your local legislators, your
• 27:16
  state Senate, your State House, most of us, we get really
• 27:20
  excited and vote for president. But I would argue that the
• 27:24
  president, unless you're in the military, has a much lower
• 27:28
  impact on your life than your school board member.
• 27:31
  Because your school board member is determining your housing
• 27:33
  value. It's determining your crime
• 27:35
  rates, it's determining the quality of your local economy.
• 27:39
  Other people that are graduating, you know, can they
• 27:41
  read and write? Do they have the math skills?
• 27:43
  The president's not controlling that.
• 27:45
  Your local school board is. So put more thought into your
• 27:47
  local school board and make sure that your State House and your
• 27:52
  state Senate representatives ask them, are you just going to give
• 27:56
  my money to the local school system and look the other way,
• 27:59
  or are you going to hold them accountable for the academic
• 28:02
  outcomes? And in more and more states, we
• 28:04
  are seeing that schools are being held to a higher standard.
• 28:08
  And it, it needs to, it needs to happen more.
• 28:11
  So that's the hope. The hope is there.
• 28:14
  We can save our public schools. We have to save our public
• 28:17
  schools. We don't have a choice.
• 28:19
  Our future is going to look pretty dim if we don't.
• 28:22
  And I and I really wrote Failure Factory to give people the
• 28:25
  pathway on how to do it. And I just, I'm so grateful for
• 28:28
  you to have me on your show and, and thank you.
• 28:31
  Absolutely. And in the vein of Full
• 28:33
  disclosure, I will let you know I am a member of my local school
• 28:37
  board, so I get it. Absolutely.
• 28:41
  And we had to put in new reading programs because the results
• 28:45
  were horrific. So change is possible.
• 28:50
  It absolutely is. So where can people find your
• 28:55
  book? Failure Factory How Baltimore
• 28:58
  City Public schools deprive taxpayers and students of a
• 29:01
  future can be found anywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
• 29:04
  Goodreads, your local bookstore should have it.
• 29:06
  If they don't, they can certainly order it.
• 29:09
  And you know, I, I wrote this book and I'm sitting here and
• 29:11
  I'm, I'm, I'm speaking with you about it because I have a lot of
• 29:13
  passion about it. My kids do go to public schools.
• 29:17
  You know, I am somebody who, I, I don't just invest.
• 29:20
  I shouldn't say that. I, I don't just investigate
• 29:22
  public schools. I also live it.
• 29:25
  And I, I, I got my kids in public school.
• 29:27
  So I'm living this every single day.
• 29:29
  I'm not like many of our superintendents who don't send
• 29:32
  their own kids to public schools.
• 29:34
  You know, I, I do like my kids go to these local public schools
• 29:37
  and, and I'm proud that they do. So I, I have a stake in this
• 29:41
  And, you know, I want our public schools to do better.
• 29:43
  I know that they can. And I don't think that it's,
• 29:46
  it's that difficult of a thing to do.
• 29:49
  We have seen around the country examples that, you know, didn't,
• 29:54
  didn't take 20 or 25 years to turn things around.
• 29:57
  It can be done fairly quickly, but it all comes down to us.
• 30:02
  And you, the parents, got to push.
• 30:04
  Absolutely. Well, it has been wonderful.
• 30:07
  Thank you so, so much for joining us.
• 30:11
  And with that, I am going to say goodbye to all the viewers and
• 30:16
  thank you until next week, All right?