Our Reporting

February 14, 2024

Ghost guns ‘not a big issue’? Las Vegas police records say otherwise

During his campaign for governor, then-Sheriff Joe Lombardo claimed the Las Vegas police department he led seized just six ghost guns in one year. But officers actually seized 252 of the weapons during that time.

February 2, 2024

An appraiser told Anchorage its property was worth $3M. The city sold it to the former mayor for $2M.

The municipal board that approved the sale — and a below-market lease — includes two members with ties to former Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who also used to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate.

December 11, 2023

Widely used reading test often wrong

“Flipping a coin would actually be better” for identifying struggling readers, one researcher said of the test created by influential curriculum developers Fountas and Pinnell.

November 19, 2023

Segway inventor’s private companies reap millions from the federally funded nonprofit he runs

More than $215 million in federal money is pouring into ARMI, a nonprofit that promises to revolutionize medicine and revitalize Manchester, New Hampshire. At least $34 million is flowing through ARMI to for-profit companies controlled by its executive director.

September 26, 2023

Tesla needs graphite. Alaska has plenty. But mining it raises fears in nearby Native villages.

Graphite is a critical ingredient in the batteries needed to power America’s electric vehicle revolution. But every ounce of it is imported. A proposed mine in a remote part of Alaska would change that. But some of the people who live nearby fear it will endanger their way of life.

July 17, 2023

St. Louis police data: Nearly 60% of homicides committed since 2017 are unsolved

Newly released data reveals no resolution for the families of hundreds of homicide victims. Police refused to release homicide clearance data, so we sued to find out.

May 30, 2023

Alaska Gov. Dunleavy policy adviser who said ‘divorce is worse than rape’ resigns

Jeremy Cubas resigned from his $110,000 a year job as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s pro-family policy adviser after Alaska Public Media and APM Reports revealed that Cubas defended Hitler, used racist slurs and said a man raping his wife is "an impossible act."

May 16, 2023

City contracts drive millions in pandemic profits for Anchorage soup kitchen

Bean’s Cafe cashed in big running the Sullivan Arena homeless shelter.

March 24, 2023

GPS tracking and gumshoe surveillance: How private investigations are transforming Nevada politics

Surveillance of politicians in the Reno area was more extensive than previously known, and one private investigator had ties to prominent local Republicans.

November 17, 2022

How legislation on reading instruction is changing across the country

More states are now requiring districts to adopt curriculum that adheres to the science of reading.

November 10, 2022

Heinemann’s billion-dollar sales have nationwide reach

APM Reports found that the controversial educational publishing company has sold instructional materials and professional resources in almost every state, earning at least $1.6 billion over a decade.

October 20, 2022

Want to know more about the science of reading?

Here’s a reading list put together by Emily Hanford, host and lead producer of our podcast Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

October 18, 2022

GOP donor trying to reshape Nevada politics pushes radical conspiracy theories, repeatedly cites antisemitic propaganda

Robert Beadles made his name by making unfounded election claims and backing candidates who share his radical beliefs. But an investigation found that he has repeatedly cited antisemitic propaganda and outlandish conspiracy theories.

August 9, 2022

No Excuses: Race and Reckoning at a Chicago Charter School

Producer DJ Cashmere spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. At the time, Noble followed a popular model called "no excuses." Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, Noble disavowed its own policies — calling them "assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist, and anti-black." In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his old school as it tries to reinvent itself as an anti-racist institution. And he seeks out his former students to ask them how they felt about being on the receiving end of all that education reform, and what they think now about the time they spent in his classroom.

August 2, 2022

Standing in Two Worlds: Native American College Diaries

Native American students are just a tiny fraction of all the college students in the United States. They come with different histories, confronting an education system once used to erase their languages and cultures. In this project, four Indigenous college students tell how they are using higher education to strengthen ties to their Native roots and support their people.

July 28, 2022

How a Covid-19 testing company accused of sloppiness, fraud and profiteering kept expanding

GS Labs spread across the country with the promise of reliable, convenient Covid testing. An APM Reports investigation finds that the company has at times delivered inaccurate results, faced backlogs, charged high prices, and pushed customers into unnecessary tests. Frustrated state and local government officials have often been powerless to address the complaints.

April 26, 2022

Under scrutiny, company that claimed to help troubled youth closes many operations and sells others

Many of Sequel’s behavioral health treatment centers are sold or closed following abuse allegations. But some facilities might have new life under a different name and one of the original founders.

April 23, 2022

New research shows controversial Reading Recovery program eventually had a negative impact on children

Initial gains from first-grade intervention didn’t last and kids performed worse in third and fourth grade.

April 12, 2022

More citations and new concerns follow Utah's increased oversight of troubled-teen industry

One year after the first regulatory reform in 15 years, one lawmaker says the state’s tools are still not strong enough. “There are certain violations that absolutely merit a facility being shut down.”

April 5, 2022

How Utah became the leading place to send the nation's troubled teens

A lawmaker cites the state’s “clean look, clean feel” and strong family values. But the answer is a complex combination of history, culture and weak rules and regulations. Regulators haven’t closed a facility in the last five years.

March 31, 2022

St. Louis' murder total has fallen, but some killings went uncounted

St. Louis officials are celebrating a big drop in murders while the city’s police classify more and more killings as “justifiable homicides” instead.

March 29, 2022

Discreet discipline: Here's why Utah will soon make it easier to search a teen treatment program's violation history

Six years ago, a cruel disciplinary act against a young girl was kept secret — she had been forced to sit in a horse trough filled with cold water for 30 minutes. The incident only became public after the Sent Away team released a database of records that included every violation report documented at youth treatment facilities statewide. Today the state is planning to release violation and disciplinary information online.

March 22, 2022

Shutting down a teen treatment facility in Utah is no easy task, even after serious allegations

Opening a youth treatment center is relatively simple in Utah. But state regulators often can't — or won't — shut a place down after abuse is alleged.

March 15, 2022

How 'inappropriate boundaries' for staff can lead to sexual abuse at Utah teen treatment centers

Inappropriate contact between children and staff members has happened with some frequency in Utah’s teen treatment programs. Between November 2018 and July 2021, state regulators investigated at least 20 reports of staff pushing the boundaries with children, sometimes amounting to sexual abuse. State records show that 13 people resigned or were fired from youth treatment facilities after allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior during that time, according to a data analysis from Sent Away journalists.

March 8, 2022

'Blindfolds, hoods and handcuffs': How some teenagers get to Utah's youth treatment programs

“Secure transport services,” a shadowy corner of the teen-treatment industry, are almost entirely unregulated. Parent-hired transporters can pull kids from their beds, handcuff them, hold them down or blindfold them. In Utah, a legislator who recently sponsored a bill that brought regulatory reform to the state’s booming teen-treatment industry said he wants to take a closer look at how kids from all over the country are getting to the state for treatment.

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