School Uniform Research Paper

Schools’ Uniforms and Students’ performance Many students might experience the conflict between the enforcement of uniforms from schools and the willingness to wear their own clothes. What is the difference of them plays a key role to make a decision. Schools always claim that the disciplines, convenience of management and better study environment of wearing uniforms, students are more like to be stand out among their peer by dress themselves. While parents’ viewpoints are varied from the financial situation and the behaviors of their kids.

“In 1993 the Will Rogers Middle School in Long Beach, California, instituted a uniform dress code. The school had been plagued with graffiti and students in gang style clothing. Test scores were down

As the policy was implemented the teachers noticed a different attitude in the school; the students were calmer and more polite. Students admitted their lives were easier as they were not occupied with what they would wear to school.” (W. Mitchell). This is the data that uniforms supporters want people to draw attentions. There are many data show that how uniforms benefit schools and student from all walks of life, but how can people make sure that wearing schools uniform is the only reason that gives right to all the benefits? “But Long Beach 's glowing statistics have been met with skepticism. Some education experts say that no school can prove that uniforms alone cause such dramatic reductions in crime. Other detractors see uniform policies as a violation of students ' rights to free expression, and nothing more than a Band-Aid that fails to address the real causes of youth violence” (Svensen). One

“Student uniforms were correlated slightly (0.5) with standardized achievement scores, indicating a possible relationship; …the correlation was much smaller than indicated in the debate (Brunsma, Rockquemore, 56). In the study from Brunsma and Rockquemore, it is clear that with the help of uniforms, the profit is truly existing but not very remarkable. Likewise, things that uniforms proponents and parents care about, such as attendance, performance or the use of drugs, do have not relevant relationship between uniforms wearing, even the academic performance, attitudes. “Brunsma reviewed past studies on the effect of uniforms on academic performance. He also conducted his own analysis of two enormous databases, the 1988 National Educational Longitudinal Study and the 1998 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Brunsma concluded that there is no positive correlation between uniforms and school safety or academic achievement.” (Brunsma). In Brunsma’ book, he confirm the result with more thorough study. “Catholic school students who wore uniforms were absent more often (p < .05) and, on average, scored 3 points less (p < .01) on an achievement test than did Catholic school students who did not wear uniforms”(Brunsma 57). Another example says that “Contrary to what we expected, the 10th-grade students who were required by school policy to wear uniforms had almost a