Proposal on School Uniforms

Monique Bejarano

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Introduction

There are many factors that can effect a student’s academic achievement. School uniforms can impact a student’s attendance, the school’s graduation rate and especially their grades. A student’s academic reputation is important because this will show how well a student will perform in the future. The idea of school uniforms is to put less attention on the outfit and what people are wearing and more on schoolwork. The idea of school is to engage and develop as a youth in positive way. In today’s society sometimes kids in school could be bullied because of their outfit or even be introduced to negative lifestyles and negative activity advertised in outfits. School uniforms are can benefit many strategies such as restore order in the classroom and safety in the school. Many principals thinks that the use of uniforms can a have positive effect on violence reduction and academic achievement and can also reduce the need for discipline.

The benefit to have a positive effect on academic achievement is mostly important because once a student puts in the time to study and focus on a good grade, the less the student worries about a social life that can have a negative impact in their life such as violence, drugs and bullying. Another factor to the school uniforms is that the student does not need to worry about outfits or how they look because it is the same outfit everyday and everyone around them are wearing the same uniform. This helps with self –esteem issues because no one is being ridiculed on what they are wearing. School uniforms effect a student’s concentration on school grounds and attendance overall.

Part 1

In the article written by Gentile, she proposes that uniform use in public school is rising. The affect of school uniforms shows a correlation between achievement and the dress code. As a result of this and in the belief that uniforms make schoolrooms more orderly and more disciplined, President Clinton and the Department of Education encouraged schools to adapt uniforms. By 2005 the uniform adoption spread to 14% of public schools (Gentile, 2012).  Uniforms imply that the largest impacts may be on non-cognitive skills such as self-esteem and discipline. (Gentile, 2012).  In the recent years of research on this topic, they have well established the non-cognitive skills as actually being affective of an outfit switch to uniforms. Also stated is that non-cognitive skills formation is an important part of education and can actually be an effective factor to a student’s social and employment success as academic ability rises through the years of school. Uniforms can improve student’s outcomes in life through a few mechanisms. One example of being a positive effect is to make it easier to identify unofficial visitors at the scene and preventing the students to get involved in gangs and reducing theft on school grounds since students will not be wearing expensive outfits to school.

Uniforms make it east for students to get ready quicker in the mornings. Particularly for adolescent girls, they use the extra time used to get for sleep or for studying. In studies shown, there is a significant difference when it comes to schools and districts that choose to adopt uniforms may be inherently different from those that do not. Of particular concern is that schools and districts that adopt uniforms are likely to have lower achievement and more behavior problems than those that choose not to adopt uniforms. (Gentile,2012). They tested to see if the district had a choice of uniforms what would they want. Majority of the schools just changed the uniform colors or styles but not one wanted to get of the uniforms. The concern of the effects was whether the district chooses to adopt uniforms or not. As a result the LUSD chose to adapt to uniforms.  In elementary school there is very little impact on achievement and uniforms. As the kids grow up and go to middle school there is a slight difference between attendance and achievement. Particularly in girls, when in middle school and high school, their attendance rates and achievement to have significant improvement than public schools who do not wear uniforms.

In the research made by Hidalgo, school uniforms were used to raise school participation. A study done in Ecuador showed that students who were offered free uniforms were having positive impact of school behavior. Recently they have been provided free school uniforms to children from poor families in rural areas wit the plan to expand this program to poor urban areas.  (Hidalgo, 2013). One hundred and one schools were randomly chosen from a sample of 201 schools were scheduled to receive free uniforms throughout the year of the students wearing the uniforms, attendance of students were reported from grade fifth and sixth.  As a result, attendance improved significantly. Since school uniforms are compulsory, exposure to the free uniforms program implies that parents do not have to pay for a uniform on which they would otherwise have spend 20 and 25 dollars on. This amount can be compared to average monthly household expenditures in the two lowest quintiles of the wealth distribution of ground. (Hidalgo, 2013.) Although there is a negative effect to the schools that did not get uniforms, one can tell from the study that in poor countries, families can benefit from uniforms.

The article by Tozan she states schools where children spend most of their day is proposed as an ideal setting to implement preventative strategies against mosquitoes. The use of school uniform is a promising strategy currently under investigation. (Tozan, 2015). The methodology in this research was proposed by using a decision-analytic model to stimulate an insect treated school uniform for prevention of the dengue infection in school children in an endemic setting. The outcome of this experiment was a ratio of incremental costs to incremental health outcome (Tozan, 2015).  The effect of the stimulant research is that 50 percent of students are expected to get the infection through mosquitoes because their body is not 100 percent covered by the uniforms. As a result it has been concluded that school uniforms can help with the improvement of a decrease in students getting the dengue infection because the uniform do tend to cover up majority of the body. This can be helpful because safety is important on school grounds.

In Cribbie’s research he stated that researchers in psychology are confronted with the multiple predictions and outcomes of school uniforms. Researchers explore of both sides of this argument through debate and with the goal of education concerned parties regarding best practices for conducting adoption of school uniforms. As with whether or not a school should adopt uniform, multiplicity issues are especially perplexing and often create much confusion for researchers. (Cribbie, 2017).  The debate over school uniforms has continued for decades.