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The Ty Brady WayAuthor: thetybradyway
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Crime, Poverty, and 15,000 Abandoned Buildings: What Happens When a School System Fails a City with Chris Papst
Episode 314
Friday, 17 April, 2026
On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Chris Papst, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter for Fox 45 News and author of the explosive new book Failure Factory: How Baltimore City Public Schools Deprive Taxpayers and Students of a Future. Chris found Ty through a previous podcast interview with a candidate running for superintendent in Georgia, and it quickly becomes clear why the two were destined to have this conversation. What starts as a deep dive into one city’s school system turns into a wake-up call for parents, voters, and taxpayers all across America. Chris walks Ty through his journey from small-town Pennsylvania to the halls of Washington DC journalism, and ultimately to Baltimore in January of 2017, where he launched Project Baltimore, a five-person investigative team at Fox 45 dedicated entirely to covering public education. What he expected to find and what he actually found over the next nine years are two very different things, and that gap is exactly what Failure Factory is built on. Over eight years, Baltimore City Schools received a 38% funding increase, an additional $500 million per year in taxpayer dollars. In that same window, math proficiency rose by just one percentage point and graduation rates climbed by just one point as well, still the lowest in the state of Maryland. Of the 1,700 additional employees hired with that money, only 200 were teachers. The data, Chris makes clear, tells the story all on its own. One of the most eye-opening moments of the episode comes when Chris breaks down what he calls the 50% rule, a policy where no student can receive below a 50% for a marking period grade, regardless of attendance, homework, or test performance. Since the lowest passing grade is a 60, students effectively only need to earn 10 points to pass a class. Chris explains that this policy exists not to help students learn, but to help schools pass students, boosting pass rates and making the system appear more successful than it actually is. And the higher performing school systems in Maryland, he notes, do not have this rule. Ty and Chris also get into the very human cost of all of this, and that is where the episode hits hardest. Chris shares the story of Michelle Bradley, a woman who made it all the way to ninth grade in Baltimore City schools without ever learning to read, her dyslexia going undiagnosed until her late thirties. She now has two daughters in the same system, living in Section 8 housing with no educational or financial means to seek alternatives. These are not statistics. These are people caught in a cycle of generational poverty that a broken school system keeps spinning. The conversation also covers teacher burnout and retaliation, the discipline crisis inside classrooms, grade changing scandals, and why so many school system employees speak to Chris only under the condition of anonymity. Chris is clear that solutions exist and that we already know how to educate kids well. The difference, he argues, comes down to accountability, and accountability starts at the ballot box. Local school board elections, he tells Ty, may matter more to the average American than any presidential race when it comes to daily quality of life, from home values and local economies to crime rates and unemployment. Failure Factory is available now wherever books are sold, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Chris’s social media handles are simply his name, Chris Papst, C-H-R-I-S-P-A-P-S-T. 🔗 linktr.ee/ChrisPapst 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @hiddenlimitsoutdoors As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway
