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ABSTRACT
The attitudes of parents of fourth-grade students regarding the use of school uniforms in Lafayette County, Mississippi, were assessed. All parents of fourth graders received surveys (n = 426) that were distributed to students by their teachers; 144 responses were returned. Fifty-six percent of parents who returned surveys either strongly favored or favored the use of school uniforms in public schools. In addition to finding that the level of parental income appears to influence parental perceptions of the cost of uniforms, the survey elicited strong comments from parents on the subject of school uniforms. School districts need to solicit input from parents when considering adopting school uniforms.
Although the wearing of school uniforms has been practiced widely in European, African, and South American public school systems, the practice has been primarily associated with private schools in the United States. This practice is changing as more U.S. public school administrators have become interested in the use of school uniforms. Elementary school educators and parents in the metropolitan areas of Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., may have initiated this public interest, or certainly brought more public focus to this issue, when they decided in 1987 to experiment with the requirement of uniforms (Baker & Michael, 1987). Interest grew in the Baltimore area, and, by 1989, 74% of Baltimore's public schools had implemented school-uniform policies (Stanley, 1996). Following this lead, other public school officials across the United States have considered implementing, and in many cases have implemented, schooluniform policies. One example of these changing attitudes and policies can be found in Jackson, Mississippi. One public elementary school initiated the use of uniforms in 1992 (Hayden, 1992), a second elementary school adopted school uniforms in 1995 (Avent, 1995), and, by 1996,19 public schools in Jackson reported students wearing uniforms or the schools were considering adopting uniforms (Simpson, 1996).
As of 1996, school districts in 10 different states had put into place either voluntary or mandatory policies regarding school uniforms, primarily at the elementary and middle school levels (Stanley, 1996). Perhaps the most publicized example of school-uniform adoption involved the Long Beach, California, school district (Caruso, 1996; Cohn, 1996; Holloman, 1995; King, 1998; Mancini, 1997; Stanley, 1996; U.S. Department of Education, 1996). In 1994, this large urban...