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Pulitzer Prize-winning Inquirer series included wrongheaded propaganda for arming school cops
The Philadelphia Inquirer "Assault on Learning" series won a Pulitzer Prize today and the reporting team, by and large, deserves heartfelt congratulations. But the series' last installment, "Armed with Guns and Understanding," evidenced major journalistic shortcomings and dangerously propagandized in favor of arming Philadelphia's school police.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Inquirer series included wrongheaded propaganda for arming school cops
The Philadelphia Inquirer “Assault on Learning” series won a Pulitzer Prize today, and the reporting team, by and large, deserves heartfelt congratulations. But the series' last installment, “Armed with Guns and Understanding,” evidenced major journalistic shortcomings and dangerously propagandized in favor of arming Philadelphia's school police. At the risk of this seeming in poor taste while champagne bottles pop on North Broad, this critique was published in November:
What is up with the Inquirer's campaign to arm school cops?
The Philadelphia Inquirer has dedicated article after article to its "Assault on Learning" series, describing a school district where students suffer from widespread violence that administrators underreport so as to not look "persistently dangerous" on paper. They exposed a dysfunctional early intervention program that enrolls nearly everyone — again, like standardized test scores, looks great on paper — and helps almost no one. And they disclosed that school police receive little training and even less vetting. This year, one uniformed officer appeared in court the first day of school — to face charges for crack possession.
The most recent installment, "Armed with Guns and Understanding," however, raises more questions about the Inquirer's reporting than it does about our beleaguered public schools. Profiling the armed school police of Houston, Texas, the 4,500-word article suggests that Philly follow the lead of Houston, which has a lower rate of school violence. Since both cities are similarly big and similarly non-white, what else could explain the schools' lower rate of violence?
Well, we don't really know, since the Inquirer simply implies/assumes that armed police were the decisive factor. And perhaps they were. But as social scientists like to say, correlation does not equal causation. It's bad journalism to assume that the two districts' different outcomes (less vs. more violence) are the result of a single cause (armed police). I would imagine that the differences between the two cities (one Texan, one Pennsylvanian) and two districts go well beyond whether school cops have guns. That's just a hunch, but it's not my job to figure that out — it was the Inquirer's, and they didn't. This was a thinly disguised editorial for arming and "professionalizing" our school police hidden under even thinner reporting.
While its methods may at times seem harsher than in Philadelphia — Houston school-police K-9 units conduct random sweeps for weapons and drugs — statistics suggest that its professionally policed schools are markedly less violent than Philadelphia's.
Houston reported 925 assaults, or 46 per 10,000 students, compared with Philadelphia's 2,696 assaults, or 175 per 10,000 students.
When Nutter and Ramsey raised the idea of armed police in Philadelphia schools, they faced fierce pushback. But educators interviewed in the Houston school system are pleased with the armed officers in a force controlled by the district.
But armed school cops in Houston telling a reporter that guns make their schools safer does not count as proof — or come even close to meriting nearly 5,000 words. Of all the tragic stories of Philly school assaults recounted in the series, not a single one would have been prevented or contained by a gun.
And the Inquirer failed to explore possible drawbacks to armed school police. It's a shame that Deborah Fowler, deputy director of the public-interest law center Texas Appleseed, had to submit an op-ed to explain that research "shows that putting a commissioned police force in schools leads to increased court referrals, placing students at significantly higher risk of failure in school and extended involvement in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems." Fowler had in fact been interviewed by the Inquirer, but her criticism and that of others was shunted aside to a short sidebar on "What other school districts are doing around the country."
Random classroom searches by Houston K-9 units are portrayed as tough but necessary. It's not what the kids of some Inquirer readers might be accustomed to at Friends Select, but hey, poor and/or black kids need really, really tough love. The relentless storytelling about heroic Houston school police might lull the reader into forgetting that this reporting demonstrates absolutely nothing. But the holes in this story — which aims to have a big impact on the city's students — are too enormous to ignore.
Incredibly, in a recent letter to the editor, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison states that the article's entire premise was just plain wrong: Philly schools already have armed police! "The Inquirer ignored the facts, disregarded my statement that city police have been stationed in schools for more than 30 years, and only once noted that Philadelphia officers are 'assigned' to city schools," Gillison wrote. This includes 40 Philly cops stationed at 22 schools and another 40 who cover schools in different areas of the city.
These officers, of course, are armed. We didn't hear anything about whatever role, positive or negative, they play. Nor are we told whether Houston schools experienced a decline in violent crime after armed police were introduced in 1992.
Interestingly, this wouldn't be the first time a story from Houston turned out to good to be true. In 2000, Gov. George Bush touted the city's dramatic test score improvements, dubbed the "Texas Miracle," on the campaign trail and went on to name superintendent Rod Paige his Secretary of Education. The test gains were later shown to be illusory. Conveniently, most dropouts went unreported.
Perhaps most troublingly, this and other articles reference a proposal to arm Philly's school police. But as far as I can see, no group or individual has made such a proposal — save for Inquirer's own surreptitious lobbying effort. The Inquirer even attempted to take credit for the recommendations issued in September by a blue ribbon commission on safe schools (that was formed well before the series began), though nowhere did the 100-member panel recommend arming school police. School district and city officials should pause before translating this weak reporting into research-blind public policy. Readers might love to get tough on crime, but reporters have a greater responsibility to be true to the facts.
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