2. Do Uniforms Help?

            As of 2000, about 27 percent of U.S. public elementary school students were wearing some type of school uniform, most often in disadvantaged school districts or predominantly minority areas like Prince George’s County, Maryland. But the research on whether uniforms have positive effects is murky at best. One problem is that most studies on the subject are sponsored by the companies that manufacture school uniforms (Lands End and French Toast among them); research from within this multimillion-dollar business may be less than objective.

David Brunsma, a Missouri researcher, has been studying school uniforms since 1996 and just published a book, The School Uniform Movement and What It Tells Us About American Education. His conclusion is that uniforms by themselves don’t curb violence or discipline problems, don’t boost students’ self-esteem, don’t improve academic achievement (in fact, reading scores may be a little lower in schools that require uniforms), and don’t level the playing field in the status wars (there are always subtle things that some students are teased about). Brunsma says that the positive stories people hear (such as the seeming success of uniforms in Long Beach, California) aren’t convincing because other initiatives or demographic shifts may account for at least some of the gains.

Students aren’t always crazy about uniform requirements. “[U]niforms are uncomfortable,” said Aaron Morton, a seventh grader at Decatur Middle School in Prince George’s County, Maryland. “They make you feel all stiff like robots or something.” But administrators at Aaron’s school think uniforms have helped – and like the fact that it’s easier to spot outsiders in the school and pick up students trying to blend in on city streets after cutting out of school in the middle of the day.

The secret to getting academic and behavioral gains from uniforms may be introducing them in tandem with more substantive reforms. If they are part of a broader set of reforms, uniforms may play an important symbolic role, signaling to students, parents, and staff that things are changing for the better, that school is now serious business. “I think some people think if you change the clothes, everything else is going to change magically,” said Decatur principal Rudolph Saunders. “But it all has to be part of a package.”

 

“Uniform Effects?” by Debra Viadero in Education Week, Jan. 12, 2005 (Vol. 24, #18, p. 27-29) http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/01/12/18uniform.h24.html