School Uniforms & Academic Outcomes?

GUIDING REFLECTION QUESTION: Do school uniforms improve PreK-12 students’ academic and social outcomes?

According to Brunsma and Rockquermore (1998), uniform advocates often make statements such as: student uniforms decrease substance use and behavioral problems while increasing attendance and academic achievement (p. 3). Underwood (2018) echoes this observation and draws a link between the United States Department of Education’s urge to adopt school uniforms. The U.S. Department of Education approached school uniforms “as a strategy” (Underwood, 2018, p. 1) for reducing school violence, maintaining discipline, preventing gang affiliated colors, providing schoolwide safety benefits that complement many uniform advocates’ statements and helping students and their families against peer pressure (Underwood, 2018, p. 1). Citing the National Center for Education Statistics, Underwood (2018) highlights the significant increase of uniform requirements from 1996’s 3% to 2013’s increase to “23% elementary schools and 15% of public high schools that required students to wear uniforms” (Underwood, 2018, p. 1). It is important to examine how uniform policies may only serve as a band-aid while camouflaging other conditions; concealing existing issues such as how educational institutions engage in symbolic violence against students, especially Black, other students of color and students within low socioeconomic status that often have to combat harmful social narratives about who they are. Fighting these narratives may led to the very behaviors uniform mandates intend to mend.

While a decade of research has engaged the school uniform debate, Brunsma and Rockquermore (1998) identified a gap, leading to conducting empirical analyses to investigate “the relationship between uniforms and several outcomes that represent the core elements of uniform proponents’ claims” (p. 3). These claims, such as those outlined by Brunsma and Rockquermore (1998) and Underwood (2018), are ones used by Brunsma and Rockquermore (2018) as research questions. Using the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NRLS:88), Brunsma and Rockquermore (1998) broadened such debates by using a nationally representative sample of students to determine if school uniforms improve PreK-12 students’ academic and social outcomes as believed. When joining such studies, using a broadened sample of students is necessary due to the often oversampled “minority groups, private sector schools and high-performance schools” (p. 4). Within their study, Brunsma and Rockquermore (1998) concluded that school uniforms do not improve pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade (PreK-12) students’ academic and social outcomes. They go on to point out that uniform policies can be viewed as “analogous to cleaning and brightly painting a deteriorating building in that on the one hand it grabs our immediate attention; on the other hand, it is only a coat of paint” (p. 9). Brunsma and Rockquermore’s (1998) findings and implications call for student voice to provide an additional entry point to evaluating the effects of uniform policies. Mccarthy and Moreno (2001) examined students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of school uniform policies by conducting a content analysis that resulted in four emerging categories: students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the school uniform policy, personal expression, self-esteem and fashion label salience (p. 9). According to Mccarthy and Moreno (2001), “majority of students did not believe the policy to be effective in instating the expected positive outcomes” intended by the school administration” (p. 20). Student voices may lend more insights within such studies.

As presented in these studies, school uniforms do not significantly influence positive outcomes. Student behaviors, attitudes, behaviors and overall school performance rely on more than a symbol of conformity. The lingering question remains: what conditions led to the undesired student outcomes that uniform mandates aim to resolve? Students can answer this question.

References

Brunsma, David L. and Kerry A. Rockquemore. (1998). Effects of student uniforms on

attendance, behavior problems, substance use and academic achievement. Journal of

Educational Research, 92(1), 53-62. Retrieved February 23, 2021, from

https://faculty.unlv.edu/sloe/Courses/EPY%20702/Class%20Exercises/Lecture%201%20Materials/Articles/Brunsma%20et%20al.%20(1998).pdf

Mccarthy, T. M., & Moreno, J. (2001). School Uniform Policies: Students’ Views of

Effectiveness. Journal of School Leadership, 11(6), 536–561.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/105268460101100604

Underwood, J. (2018). School uniforms, dress codes, and free expression: What’s the

balance?

Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 99, 6: pp. 74-75. , First Published February 26, 2018. Retrieved

February 27, 2021 from

https://kappanonline.org/underwood-school-uniforms-dress-codes-free-expression/