This would later become "Dressing Alike: Uniforms Hit the Public School Arena." Click here for my second draft.

Uniformed Public Schools
by Micah Holmquist
September 29, 2000

School uniforms by DKNY? The thought of the fashionable DKNY making uniforms seems a bit odd but DKNY does it as do Bugle Boy and Esprit.

These three companies compete along many lesser known apparel manufacturers are all trying to sell their products to the growing numbers of students whose schools are asking them to wear uniforms. This growth does not stem from a larger number of students attending private schools, which have long been bastions of uniforms, so much as it does from the greater number of public schools requiring uniforms.

Uniforms in public schools are a recent phenomenon that date back less than 15 years. The first ever public school to require uniforms in the United States was Cherry Hill Elementary in Baltimore, which did so in 1987. A handful of schools followed suit but the practice did not become widespread till the mid- 1990s. In 1994 the public school system in Long Beach, CA made uniforms mandatory for all students in its elementary and middle schools with the goal of reducing misbehavior, crime, and violence in school. Many schools districts and hundreds, if not thousands, of schools have experimented with uniforms in the years since then including schools in Chicago and New York City.

The precise number of public schools with uniforms is not clear due to conflicting statistics. A 1997 study by the Department of Education found that only 3 percent of public schools required students to wear uniforms. However, the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the apparel retailing giant Land’s End surveyed 750 principals this past May and found that 11 percent of their schools has uniform policies. The survey found that uniforms were most common in elementary schools.

Whatever the percentage, a lot of money is spent on uniforms. The New York based marke t research firm NPD Group has estimated that parents spent $900 million on uniforms for elementary school children in 1998. That comes out to about 7 percent of the total amount spent on children’s clothing and this was number has likely risen since then. The exact size of the industry has become increasingly difficult to determine as more schools have adopted uniforms that might sound like strict dress codes. Many schools require no more of students than that they wear clothes in a limited number of colors and that shirts have collars and be tucked in.

Political leaders have been quick to support uniforms. The U.S. Conference of Mayors came out in favor of uniforms in 1998. President Clinton said in his 1996 State of the Union Address that "If it means that teenager will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require students to wear uniforms."

The Education Department released the pro-uniform report Manual on School Uniforms a few months after Clinton’s endorsement. This document could very well serve as the bible of the pro-uniform cause. It contains accurate information on what public schools can and can not do in terms of uniforms. Schools can not ban expressions of political or religious beliefs so long as the expression of such beliefs does not disrupt the education process. By the same token, schools can force students to wear clothing that espouses political or religious beliefs. And, perhaps most importantly since this is the area where opponents of uniforms have had the most success in challenging the legality of uniforms, schools need to provide assistance to students if buying uniforms puts a financial burden on their parents.

Mixed in with the legal dos and don’ts of uniforms is advice on how to successfully implement a uniform policy such as "Get parents involved form the beginning" is one such piece of advice. The report bolsters the case for uniforms by looking at eight school districts with uniform policies, including Long Beach, and listing significant declines in violence and misbehavior or improvements in climate that each district experience after adopting uniforms.

The problem with this section is that it does consider any other explanations for these improvements. It mentions that crime went down by 36 percent and fights decreased by more than half in Long Beach following the implementation of uniforms but does not look at what happened in comparable schools without uniforms. Researchers such as Mike Males have found a similar decrease in crime and fights in the schools of neighboring Los Angeles, which doesn’t have uniforms. Males, who has authored the contrarian but well researched books The Scapegoat Generation and Framing Youth, says that "school administrators feel good about school uniforms and when you feel good about something, you attribute good things to it."

Academic studies that go beyond circumstantial evidence and attempt to account for variables have not been any kinder to uniforms. University of Notre Dame sociologists David Brunsma and Kerry Rockquemore concluded in a paper published in the Journal of Education Research that "student uniforms have no direct effect on substance abuse, behavioral problems or attendance." Furthermore the authors found that uniforms were detrimental to academic success.

Advocates of uniforms do cite one advantage that is more difficult to dismiss. Adolescence is a time of great uncertainty and awkwardness for many people and expensive or stylish clothing is often a very important signifier of status during this period. Uniforms lessen this by taking the emphasis off of what people are wearing. "Uniforms are cool because you don’t have to decide what you are going to wear," says girlstar56, a ninth grader from Phoenix who asked that their name not be used. "If you dress not very cool then uniforms are better."

Not everyone is convinced that uniforms do much to solve this problem, however. Eleventh grader Cheyenne of Louisville, Kentucky says, "the uniform ‘solution’ is only adding to the problem. Students have other ways of expressing themselves." She adds "it turns the whole system into an accessory war, in which in the student without a class ring is discriminated against instead of the kid without a Tommy Hilfiger shirt."

Data on the percentages of young people who favoring or oppose uniforms is not available but there can be no doubt that quite a few are alarmed by these policies. "Uniforms are evil. They destroy a sense of individuality amongst students," says eighth grader Randy Patterson of Sarasota, Florida. Several other young people interviewed for this story echoed Patterson’s sentiment with some even comparing school uniforms to fascism and totalitarianism.

Young people are not the only ones who feel that uniforms in public school violate their rights. Although some surveys have shown that the majority of parents with grade school children favor uniforms, a number of parents have argued that these policies violate their rights as parents. A little over a year ago the school district in Wilson County, Tennessee mandated uniforms but has been met by opposition from the Wilson County Parents Coalition which formed to oppose uniforms. Coalition member Theresa Harmon says that this policy violates parental rights by "forcing use to purchase clothing that we nor our children want or need." Harmon goes on to say that members of the coalition feel that "when any government entity begins to mandate what style, type, color, and fabric that our children must wear in order to attend a publicly funded school, they have crossed the line." Although organized opposition to uniforms by parents is far from widespread, at least one other similar group does exist in Forney, Texas.

Still it appears that uniforms will continue to be part of many public schools for the foreseeable future because they are an easy step to take that purports to improve schools even if they don’t actually do that. "School uniforms don’t put a burden on anybody but students and they don’t put much of a burden on students," says Males. Regardless of whether they support or oppose uniforms, many do students feel a tinge of discomfort when it comes to uniforms. girlstar56 expressed this ambivalence well saying that having uniforms is "all right but it’s not that cool."

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