Uniforms changing culture of the nation's classrooms

By John Ritter
USA TODAY
Thur., Oct. 15, 1998

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Four years ago, the public schools here drew attention as the first in the nation to require students to wear uniforms. The drumbeat for uniforms has rolled louder ever since.

In his 1996 State of the Union speech, President Clinton urged uniforms as a way to keep teen-agers ``from killing each other over designer jackets.'' The Education Department published an Internet manual on how to adopt a uniform policy. Some of the nation's largest districts -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami-Dade County, Cleveland -- moved to put students in uniforms. And this month, at a national summit on school violence, the U.S. Conference of Mayors endorsed uniforms even for high school students.

But absent in the rush to uniforms has been proof they actually promote better behavior. Now, from this melting-pot port city of 385,000, comes hard data suggesting they do. Long Beach schools report a 91% drop in assaults, thefts, vandalism and weapon and drug violations since 1991. Youth crime off school grounds is also down, as much as 30%, though police attribute that to a host of measures including uniforms.

``Uniforms take away the No. 1 reason kids treat each other differently: how they look,'' says Sgt. Joe Battle, a Long Beach juvenile officer.

Few school districts have statistics comparing crime before and after uniforms, because most have switched in just the last year or two.

The little available data are encouraging but inconclusive. In Birmingham, Ala., drug and weapon incidents dropped 30% in two years after the school board required uniforms. In Houston schools, violent crime is down 38% in the last two years. But a study of Miami-Dade County schools found that fights nearly doubled at middle schools that went to uniforms, while uniforms seemed to have stopped an alarming rise in elementary school incidents.

Nationally, no research correlates lower crime rates with uniforms. Most evidence is anecdotal. A survey by the Educational Testing Service found that most principals believe uniforms improve school discipline. Officials in schools that have uniforms say they bolster security because outsiders are easy to spot on school grounds. When students are in uniform, fights over clothing stop. Gang influence wanes because no one wears gang colors or gang attire. Students feel safer walking to school.

Socio-economic lines blur. ``Uniforms reduce the differences between the haves and have-nots,'' says Linda Moore, principal at Will Rogers Middle School in Long Beach.

And some educators even think uniforms contribute to higher academic achievement because students aren't distracted by clothes -- theirs or classmates' -- and they treat school as their job. ``Kids know they're here for business. This is their business attire just like if they were at IBM,'' Moore says.

`A Band-Aid solution'?

But critics say schools need more than uniforms. ``It's a Band-Aid solution to problems -- crumbling school buildings, 10-year-old textbooks -- that defy easy solutions,'' says Loren Siegel, public education director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.

In many places, uniforms are just one piece of broader reforms. ``By themselves uniforms won't make a major difference,'' says Cozette Buckney, chief education officer of Chicago schools. ``They're just window dressing.''

She says Chicago schools are producing better test scores because of higher academic standards, a ban on social promotion and required summer school for low achievers. In 1996, the school board ordered every school to consider uniforms, and more than 80% have adopted them.

The district has no comparative data, Buckney says, ``but we're certainly seeing a drop in disciplinary reports.''

The ACLU says uniforms inhibit students' expression and has sued schools over policies it deems too rigid. Courts usually have upheld uniform policies. ``We're not against uniforms, we're just against them being forced down parents' throats,'' says Andy Brumme, an ACLU lawyer who's fighting a mandatory policy in Lancaster County, S.C.

Other critics say uniforms squelch a key social rite of passage. ``Clothes are a way children find out who they are, what they are and who the others are,'' says Ruth Rubinstein, a sociology professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. ``Clothes are their orientation to social life, and we're taking that away from them.''

Most districts that call policies mandatory allow exceptions if parents insist. But most families go along -- once uniforms are de rigueur, the pressure is to conform. In Long Beach, less than 1% of students in kindergarten through eighth grade don't wear uniforms.

In many cities, uniforms caught on after one or two schools tried them. Poor, inner-city Whittier Elementary here adopted uniforms in 1991, other Long Beach schools began switching over, and in 1994 the school board made them mandatory except in high school. Now, ninth and 10th graders at Wilson Classical High are the first in the upper grades to be in uniform. Eventually, all four grades will be in uniform.

Chemiya Carter, a Wilson freshman, likes uniforms and says fashion pressure can be intense outside of school. ``If you aren't wearing Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren it's like you are less of a person,'' Carter, 14, says.

Each Long Beach school picks its own uniforms and colors -- pants, shorts and skirts one color, shirts another, but both solids. No labels, brands or insignia are permitted except the school's, even on shoes. The cost of outfitting a student varies, depending on whether the family shops at a discount store or a high-end department store.

Freshmen wearing Wilson's khaki pants and white shirts said they hated the teasing from juniors and seniors but agreed uniforms made life easier. They get by with four or five shirts and two or three pairs of pants, far fewer than if they weren't in uniform.

``I'd have a lot of pants and shorts, and a lot of brand-name shirts and like two pairs of shoes to go with each outfit,'' says Holy Ly, 14.

George Berganza, 14, says: ``With uniforms, you don't have to think about competition. You don't have to think about labels or if you're wearing something too often.''

Parents most supportive

Once uniforms are ingrained, the biggest fans usually are parents. They spend less on clothes. Their kids are less stressed over fashion. They get out of the house faster in the morning.

``If you watch, on warm days, these high school kids are close to coming out in bathing suits,'' says Charlene Ebright, whose daughter Noelle is a 10th grader. ``Really, some of the styles now . . . .''

If civil libertarians believe forcing uniforms on kids chokes expression, many parents would say expression in clothes is beside the point. They'd rather see expression in math and English.

Speaking for moms everywhere, Cyndi Seibert says: ``As the mother of a boy with teen-age hormones, the uniform makes the young lady sitting next to him in biology lab less of a distraction, and the teacher a little easier to focus on, because she's got on a collared shirt with sleeves instead of a spaghetti strap with her bra hanging out.''

Parents, in fact, are driving the uniform movement in many places. They're often initially reluctant if the impetus comes from school boards or principals. But they're quickly won over, and districts that have polled parents have found overwhelming support.

Webster Elementary draws kids from a low-income, working-class industrial pocket of Dayton, and parents initially resented the school promoting uniforms, principal Sandra Kidd says.

``They already had so many other directives in their lives from institutions they depend on for livelihood or public assistance,'' Kidd says. ``But they're very supportive now. They like not hassling with their kids over clothes.''

Dayton gave schools the uniform option a few years ago, and children in 27 of 50 schools now wear them. Nearly 100 of Miami-Dade's 288 schools were already in uniform when the school board said any campus could switch if more than half the parents approved. Within two years, 112 more schools chose uniforms.

Last March, when the New York City school board ordered all 670 elementary schools in uniform by fall 1999, more than 75,000 students were already wearing them. Even in San Francisco, which has no uniform policy, students in 34 schools (of 115) wear them.

In 1995, the Los Angeles school board set a goal of getting all 600 schools in uniform. So far, 410 are on board.

Oakland has a mandatory uniform policy, but so many parents ``opt out,'' says spokeswoman Sue Piper, that some schools have half their students in street clothes. That may be the result of an 1996 lawsuit. The ACLU challenged Oakland's uniform policy and won a settlement under which the district agreed to more cash aid to needy parents for uniforms and to tell parents clearly they had a right to opt out.

Many schools raise money to buy uniforms for low-income parents. For the first time this year, San Antonio required uniforms for all 60,000 students from kindergarten through high school. When all the bills are in, the district will have handed parents $350,000 to $400,000 in uniform vouchers, says spokesman Robert Zamora.

Lloyd Choice, principal at Houston's Jack Yates High School, says he'd always been skeptical about uniforms. Then his own students started lobbying for them. ``That really shocked me,'' Choice says. ``Pretty soon the parents caught on. On opening day this fall, I tell you, it just brought tears to your eyes. Out of 1,800 kids, we had 12 report not in uniform.''

Choice says that after 35 years in the public schools, ``I didn't believe it would affect behavior, but it does. My children are behaving so much better. I had to experience it to believe it.''

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