Do School Uniforms Fit?

School Administrator, Feb, 2000 by Kerry A. White

Anecdotal Evidence

Despite Smith's beliefs and those of likeminded policymakers and school officials, research on the effects of school uniforms has been inconclusive or mixed.

In a 1995 study seeking an answer to the question of whether dress codes and school uniforms can help curb school violence and other antisocial behaviors, Lillian 0. Holloman, a professor in the department of clothing and textiles at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, concluded that it depends on whom you ask. That's because much of the debate between advocates and opponents, she says, is based on anecdotal accounts rather than scientific data, which is difficult to extract.

But a 1996 paper on school uniforms and school safety by M. Sue Stanley, a professor of education at California State University at Long Beach, says uniforms can "reduce the emphasis on fashion wars" and, in the long run, help reduce the financial strain of clothing costs on low-income families. Stanley says school uniforms can help encourage students to concentrate on learning, rather than on what to wear, and are "social equalizers" that help to promote peer acceptance and school pride.

A 1997 study by David L. Brunsma, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Kerry A. Rockquemore, an assistant professor of sociology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., however, says school uniforms "have no direct effect on substance use, behavioral problems or attendance." And, contrary to other studies and hundreds of anecdotal accounts, the authors find a negative effect of uniforms on academic achievement.

"Instituting a school uniform policy can be viewed as analogous to cleaning and brightly painting a deteriorating building," they conclude. "On the one hand, it grabs our immediate attention. On the other hand, it is of paint."

Perhaps the biggest opposition to school uniforms and dress codes has been based not on research but on legal concerns, with opponents arguing that requiring students to abide by a strict regimen violates their constitutional right to freedom of expression.

In a landmark 1969 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that students "do not shed their constitutional rights at the school house door." At issue were three Tinker children--John, Jane and Sarah--who had been sent home from school for wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. The U.S. Supreme Court has never since directly addressed school uniforms. And while most lower court challenges to school uniform policies and dress codes citing that decision have been more trivial in nature--lawsuits have been brought over students' rights to don sagging pants and offensive T-shirts, for example--court decisions generally have upheld the constitutionality of uniforms and dress codes, according to Richard Fossey, a professor of education at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and an expert on student dress codes.