Baltimore Public Schools Show the Difference Between Competent and Terrible K-12 Education Policy
Contrary to what the media says, we can measure school success—and Baltimore provides a lesson in what not to do.
For years, we’ve known that school systems in America's biggest cities are massive waste dumps for taxpayer dollars—spending upwards of $15,000 per student each year to achieve some of the worst proficiency scores ever seen.
But measuring how they're failing is trickier than you might think.
School officials offer the usual excuses: Students come from bad families, crime is out of control, and budgets are strained from maintaining large facilities. “It’s a lack of parenting. Where are the parents?” asked one educator at Baltimore Public Schools, whose district’s appalling proficiency scores we are about to discuss.
“I wouldn’t say the school district is at fault,” said Janise Lane, the Baltimore Schools executive director of teaching and learning, in response to a question about these falling scores.
In most cases, these excuses aren't good-faith efforts to show they're trying hard to improve conditions—they're meant to deflect scrutiny from failure.
The truth is, schools—which teach kids for six to eight hours each day over 180 days of the year or more—have a profound influence on students' future trajectory, career, and life outcomes.
If results are weak at the start, when students are still children—and show no signs of improvement—what else can we expect but more challenges in adulthood?
And there is no one revealing that trajectory of failure more than Chris Papst in his new book, Failure Factory: How Baltimore City Public Schools Deprive Taxpayers and Students of a Future.
I recently interviewed Papst for my podcast. Papst, a Fox45 TV anchor and journalist, has covered Baltimore City Schools since 2017 as part of an operation called Project Baltimore. That's yielded mountains of data showing the damage that bad school policies had on students whose lives are now permanently damaged.
In 2017, for instance, zero students scored "proficient" on Maryland's math proficiency exam in 13 of Baltimore's 39 public high schools.
That failure rate was unchanged six years later. You know what else hadn't changed? The high schools' administrative policies.
In a desperate bid to graduate more failing students, Baltimore Public Schools drastically reduced suspensions by 62 percent—from 17,520 in 2007 to 6,665 in 2019—even though teachers said bad behavior remained unchanged.
Unsurprisingly, that gave safe harbor for bullies and violent, anti-social students to distract, harass, and harm other students. One parent, Crystal, said school administrators did nothing to stop bullies targeting her sixth grader. She ultimately transferred schools to escape.
Superintendents have vowed to improve conditions across the board with nothing to show for it. Not so at Baltimore Boys Academy, which raised math proficiency from 9 percent in 2015 to 14.4 percent in 2017. This is from a charter school that does not have admissions requirements.
As Papst describes it, these schools have created a corrupt system that seems hell-bent on churning out unqualified students with diplomas they didn't earn just to keep administrators on payroll—and well-paid, at that. The superintendent earned a stunning $479,000 in 2024.
Papst calls this the "50 Percent Rule": No student can receive a grade below 50 percent, even if they do no work at all.
Predictably, virtually every student gets at least the 60 percent grade needed to pass their class. In his book, Papst points out that many students love the 50 Percent Rule. “I didn’t expect it,” he quotes one supportive student.
But the obvious result is to disincentivize students from the hard work of learning—which, as every sane American knows, is the point of school.
Remember, Baltimore taxpayers spend $15,000 per public school student to achieve this abysmal result. We should wonder why. For that fortune, families could hire private math and reading tutors for practically every student.
Fortunately, Failure Factory is already having an effect. After the book was published, Papst revealed that Baltimore Public Schools superintendent Miriam Rogers will retire at the end of the 2026 school year.
That's great. But the problem, as Papst explained, is that her successor won't recognize the urgent need for change—now.
"The answer lies in the voters," Papst said. "The voters have to vote for people that are going to hold the school system accountable.”
That’s the only solution. The system will not change until those behind it are held accountable by the only people who have the power to force change: voters. That would be the ultimate reality check for those who wrongly say that school systems will one day reform themselves.
Change comes from political pressure. And that may be the biggest lesson from Failure Factory—and Papst's most lasting legacy.
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