A couple of Sundays ago the N&R carried a guest editorial by Libby Rodenbough telling her side of Aycock's school uniform experiment. Libby is an eighth grader at the school.
When I read the editorial, I was floored. Not just by the arguments and experiences presented (which ARE eye opening), but by the sheer quality of her writing. I contacted Libby and asked herto send a copy of her piece. I finally received it Friday. Read the whole thing. Some excerpts:
"...This year, the school’s administrators obviously want to get credit for having implemented a “new” program. They have emphasized enforcement above all else. Every morning, there is full-time administrator checking each student for uniform violations. If this amount of effort had been put into enforcing dress code last year, there would be no need for this more restrictive policy."
"...The school’s administration has ruled anything that smacks of protest to be a “distraction”, and they have shown no mercy in eliminating those “distractions”. Administrators have gone as far as to say on Aycock’s morning announcements that they will punish anyone whom is “out of the norm”....
The discipline climate at Aycock has improved greatly this year, this fact is undeniable. However, the change is not due to the implementation of school uniforms... the improved discipline is the result of high expectations and the unwaivering enforcement of rules and norms.
The main thing that alarms me regarding the policy is the heavy handed squelching of protest efforts on the part of the students that Libby describes, and my daughter, Josie, confirms. I have some of the same worries about the policy that Libby has:
"...I worry, however, that teachers think uniforms imposed from on high homogenize a diverse student population. I worry that teachers and administrators are not aware of the Constitutional rights of students to protest protected by the Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines. I worry that the Central Administration will take any substantive progress at Aycock as a signal to move the other Middle Schools in the county into this cosmetic and repressive quick fix..."
I can already see eyes rolling and hear the muttering, "Get over it David, it's working. You keep harping on school discipline and Aycock has largely achieved it. What's the harm?" True... but I believe credit should be attributed where it is due and the imposition of a school uniform policy is not the real reason for the turn-around.
Aycock's success at curbing discipline problems can be duplicated in short order by any school that systematically and stringently enforces its current rules of order.
This is the lesson that I hope the central office takes from the Aycock experiment. Armed with this knowledge of experience, Aycock's SMOD policy should be declared superfluous, repressive, overly time-consuming and tedious... and then discarded as a lesson well learned.
8:48:44 AM 
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