he "halo effect" of school uniforms
(From American Teacher, Oct. 1996)
Is there a connection between student uniforms and improved school discipline? The issue has attracted tremendous interest and publicity across the country, with a growing number of schools and districts adopting uniform policies.
The results seem favorable--less violence, vandalism and fighting, and generally better discipline--but there really isn't a large body of research to confirm the connection between uniforms and other improvements in the school environment. In a recent issue of The Harvard Education Letter, researcher Marc Posner turns to the field of psychology to help explain the impact of uniforms.
School uniforms, Posner writes, might be creating a "halo effect": Rather than actually changing student behavior, uniforms might change the way teachers and other adults perceive the students who wear them. He cites a study by one researcher that seems to confirm this effect. When Dorothy Behling of Bowling Green University studied the connection between student clothing and teacher and student perceptions, she found that students and teachers alike believe that uniform-clad students behave better and do better academically than those who don't wear uniforms.
While this may be an illusion, Behling points out that these positive perceptions can help create a self-fulfilling prophecy: Teachers and administrators raise their discipline and grading standards to reflect their more positive image of students, who, in turn, behave better.
For students who choose not to wear uniforms, something more like the "little devil" effect might be at work. Posner points out that in California--where state law requires that students be allowed to "opt out" of wearing school uniforms--students who don't wear uniforms are reported for disciplinary infractions at very high rates. In one school, students who didn't wear uniforms were sent to the office at a rate 22 times higher than that for uniformed students. (Posner doesn't discuss any other characteristics of the students who opted out, which might explain these results.)