posing hardship on lower-income families.
Dress codes and uniforms are nothing new. They have long been a feature of parochial schools, where they give a sense of order and stability. Dress codes of the 1950s banned girls from wearing slacks, and boys from wearing blue jeans, motorcycle boots and black leather jackets which they associated with gangs (Anderson). In the 1980s, dress codes again became popular in an effort to counteract gang activity: gang affiliation was often identified by the clothing worn. Cherry Hill Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland was the first public school known to have adopted a school uniform, which it did in 1987, and Long Beach, California Unified School District was the first school district to adopt a district-wide dress code policy in 1994. President Clinton again endorsed the idea of school uniforms in his 1996 State of the Union Address.
Seventy-two percent of New York City's elementary schools had a standard dress code by 1999; in 2000, the Philadelphia School Board adopted a district-wide policy requiring some type of uniform; by 2000, the percentage of public schools requiring uniforms was 60 percent of Miami's, in Chicago's 80 percent, in San Francisco 30 percent, in Cincinnati 50 percent, in Boston 65 percent, in Cleveland 85 percent and in New Orleans 95 percent (Anderson). Thirty-seven state legislatures had empowered local districts to set their own uniform policies by 2000. It would appear that the trend in favor of uniforms in public schools is running high.
There is a difference between dress codes and uniforms. "..dress codes state what must not be worn; uniform policies state what must be worn" (Anderson). This is important because while dress codes have usually stood up to legal challenges in that they are usually defended on the basis that they are stipulated to reduce gang violence, uniforms can be challenged legally as a violation of students' rights. Howev...