News

June 25, 2007

Effects of uniforms at issue

People on both sides of the school dress code debate offer research to support their claims.

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter
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KINGSTON – In the passionate debate before the Wyoming Valley West School Board passed a new structured dress code Wednesday, both sides insisted research supported their opinions. Who was right?

Both sides.

The question is: How do you define research?

It is easy to find data from school districts where such dress codes were implemented that emphatically show positive changes. Here’s some of it:

• In 1994, Long Beach Unified School District, California, became the first public school district in the nation to require all students in grades K-8 to wear uniforms. In two years, they saw the suspension rates drop by 28 percent at the elementary level and 36 percent in middle schools, as well as a 51 percent decrease in fights in grades K-8, and a 34 percent drop in assault and battery. Schools in Chicago, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, and Virginia have made similar claims since then.

• A 1996 survey of 306 middle school students in the Charleston, S.C., County School District found students in a middle school with a uniform policy had better perception of school climate than students in a school without a uniform policy.

• A study of six Ohio public urban schools showed uniforms didn’t increase test scores, but that graduation rates rose an average of nearly 11 percent, attendance increase an average of 3.5 percent in four schools, and expulsion rates dipped slightly.

Other similar evidence exists, but critics contend such data is seriously flawed because it typically involves only one district or doesn’t take into account other factors that may have caused the changes. University of Missouri Sociology Professor David Brunsma, for example, points out that when Long Beach introduced uniforms, it also introduced other major reforms in content standards in the classrooms and teaching strategies.

Brunsma, in fact, is widely and repeatedly cited as the definitive source so far for comprehensive research on school dress codes. He co-authored a 1998 study that one Wyoming Valley West parent indirectly cited when she read from an article in the school newspaper. Brunsma did more extensive work after the 1998 study that was published in a book.

Brunsma looked at massive federal databases, crunching numbers from multiple districts and multiple years, and tried to correct for a variety of factors including demographics. His bottom line conclusion in the 1998 report: “Our findings indicate that student uniforms have no direct effect on substance use, behavioral problems or attendance. A negative effect of uniforms on student academic achievement was found.” That negative effect, however, was slight.

His later research echoed that. According to an Education Week article, in his book The School Uniform Movement and What It Tells Us About American Education, Brunsma wrote “Despite the media coverage, despite the anecdotal meanderings of politicians, community members, educators, board members, parents, and students, uniforms have not been effective at attacking the very outcomes and issues they were assumed to aid.”

A 2002 study in the Houston Independent School District by Adolfo Santos, political science professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, backs Brunsma’s findings. Santos looked at 28 middle schools where uniform dress codes were implemented in the 1990s. He reported that the rate of in-school and out-of-school suspensions rose sharply, though he notes that other factors could be at play, including the possibility that teachers took a keener interest in enforcing the new dress code.

Yet even Brunsma, in his 1998 report, conceded that uniforms may change people’s attitudes, which in turn could make it easier for other initiatives to successfully change the school:

“Instituting a uniform policy can be viewed as analogous to cleaning and brightly painting a deteriorating building in that on the one hand, it grabs our immediate attention but on the other, is, after all, really only a coat of paint. This type of change serves the purpose of attracting attention to schools, it implies that serious problems are existent and necessitate this sort of drastic change, and it seems entirely possible that this attention renews an interest on the parts of parents and communities, and opens the possibilities for support of additional types of organizational change.”

Lost in much of the research is the cost to parents of the switch to a new dress code, a frequent complaint by parents. For that, we can look most recently at Hazleton Area School District, where a new policy was introduced this year. The Wyoming Valley West policy is based heavily on those of Hazleton Area and Scranton School District.

When Hazleton started school, The Times Leader polled some parents on the cost of new clothes. The findings were as diverse as the research on uniform impact.

Older children could be a bigger factor if they have stopped growing and, unlike youngsters, may not need a whole new wardrobe every year or two. Joann Petchel pointed out that she had to shop for a new wardrobe to meet the new dress code when she could have gotten by with a few new pairs of shoes for her daughter.

Sheila DeAngelo, on the other hand said she outfitted her son for under $100 and that the dress code made shopping much easier. It’s worth pointing out that one complaint of some critics is that the dress code in Hazleton Area and Wyoming Valley West seem to favor males. One parent at Wednesday’s Wyoming Valley West meeting looked at students sampling outfits and said, “Why do the girls dress like boys?”

Monica Cahalan, a longtime Hazleton Area activist who successfully fought an earlier attempt to tighten Hazleton Area’s dress code, said she spent more than $1,200 to buy clothes for four children, and noted that she had to pay higher prices online for some items because local vendors were out of stock.

One Wyoming Valley West teacher said the district runs a center to provide clothes to low-income families, and even complained that many times her resources are used simply for kids who are violating the existing policy by wearing unacceptable T-shirts or pants that hang too low. She suggested the new policy would allow her program to focus on helping those who need the clothes because of family income.

In fact, nationwide, some districts that set up stricter dress codes also set up extensive programs to provide clothing for low-income families, collecting funds and seeking grants to buy the clothes.

If a clear conclusion can be drawn from all this, it could well be that the research, both local and national, is still inconclusive.

Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at 829-7161.

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