School Dress Code

I have promised myself that, wherever possible, I will make heavy use of critical thought and evidenced-based reasoning to guide my policies while serving on the Board of Education. Doing so has caused me to rethink the matter of the dress code.

Having a well thought-out dress code puts everyone on a level playing field, decreases violence and even improve grades, right? Well, that's what I thought, too, until I studied the matter. Before I educated myself, I was a proponent of a mandatory uniform consisting of khakis and a golf shirt. I felt that our current dress code was a convoluted mish-mash of confusing rules that was the result of allowing us sometimes-irrational parents to design a dress code.

I was wrong.

I came across a study entitled "The Effects of Student Uniforms on Attendance, Behavior Problems, Substance Use, and Academic Achievement" by David L. Brunsma and Kerry A. Rockquemore of the University of Alabama and Notre Dame University.

Check it out at http://www.members.tripod.com/rockqu/uniform.htm

The abstract of this study states, "Recent discourse on public school reform has focused on mandatory uniform policies. Proponents of such reform measures emphasize the benefits of student uniforms on specific behavioral and academic outcomes. This research empirically tests the claims made by uniform advocates using 10th grade data from The National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988. 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. These findings are contrary to current discourse on student uniforms. We conclude that uniform policies may indirectly affect school environment and student outcomes by providing a visible and public symbol of commitment to school improvement and reform."

Sometimes we grown-ups are guilty of imposing rules upon our children that have no effect or, even worse, a negative effect. So, the school uniform issue will be addressed again this coming April 2009. I'll be referring to this study often during that time.