Students at Leckie Elementary returned to school this year with new style. Following approval from parents and a landslide vote from students, Principal Atasha James abandoned the school’s mandatory uniform policy and gave students a chance to wear what they want.
So long to those forest green or khaki pants and yellow shirts. This year, children are sporting blue jeans, superhero tees, stripes and every color of the rainbow.
“Some girls love to wear their ball gowns to school. I say, ‘If you like it, fine,’” James said. “To see them in their own clothing, I can see their personalities more, and I love it.”
The move counters a trend that has swept over urban education in the past generation, as schools have increasingly required school uniforms.
In the District, three-quarters of traditional public schools — and many public charter schools — require students to wear uniforms. In Prince George’s County, the rate is even higher: More than 80 percent of the county’s schools require uniforms.
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Schools in the District that don’t have uniforms tend to follow a pattern: They almost all serve more affluent students.
Leckie is now the only traditional public elementary school in Ward 8, one of the poorest parts of the city, that does not have a mandatory uniform policy. Across town, not a single traditional public school in Ward 3, west of Rock Creek Park where median incomes are highest, requires a uniform.
It’s a pattern that bears out nationally. About 20 percent of U.S. public schools required students to wear uniforms in the 2011-2012 school year, up from 13 percent eight years earlier, according to federal data. Nearly half of the nation’s public schools that serve high-poverty student populations required school uniforms, compared with 6 percent of low-poverty schools.
Once synonymous with parochial or elite public schools, uniforms took hold in public schools largely as a strategy for improving those that were struggling.
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Early advocates of uniforms in public schools saw them as a way to reduce gang violence and crime in schools. President Bill Clinton, in his State of the Union address in 1996, gave the movement a boost when he said, “If it means that teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms.”
As uniforms spread, researchers and educators cited a much wider array of benefits, including improved school culture, academic performance and attendance rates.
David Brunsma, professor of sociology at Virginia Tech University, conducted a national study and found no statistically significant relationship between such performance gains and the use of school uniforms.
“For me, it’s a children’s rights issue,” said Brunsma, who has criticized school uniforms as a cosmetic fix that has little effect on school quality. “Some are more likely in this society to be supported by their schools to express themselves.”
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He said the prevalence of uniforms in high-poverty schools means that African American or Latino children are more likely to be viewed as a group, while white children are more likely to be viewed as individuals.
Abdullah Zaki, the new principal at the District’s Dunbar High School, said he doesn’t believe that uniforms lead to improved academics or school discipline, but he thinks they bring other benefits. School uniforms help prepare students for a professional world that usually requires some kind of uniform, he said.
“I tell students, ‘My uniform is a suit and tie, your uniform is a shirt with a ‘Dunbar D’ and khaki pants,’” he said.
Many parents say they like uniforms for practical reasons, including fewer early morning battles over clothes and lower household costs.
Chanel Mitchell, a mother of six, said her eldest son attends Woodson High School, a high-poverty school in Ward 7 that does not have a uniform policy, but she wishes it did.
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“He wants American Eagle, J. Crew,” she said. “It’s expensive.”
Uniforms help “a whole lot” to keep the price down, but it’s still not easy, she said. Another of her children attends a charter school, and uniform shirts with the school’s logo cost $16 each. “And it’s getting cold now, and I have to get sweaters.”
With school uniforms, some administrators said it’s easier to have extra clothes on hand for families who need them. Like a growing number of schools in the District, Maury Elementary on Capitol Hill serves students from both very wealthy and very poor families. PTA president Elsa Huxley says the school uniform helps bridge the differences.
“Having kids all wearing the uniform lets everyone start off on the same foot,” she said.
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