In his 1996 State of the Union address, Bill Clinton challenged “all our schools to teach character education, to teach good values and good citizenship. And 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.” His remark lit a fire under an incipient movement promoting required uniforms for students in public schools, and a decade later, Nashville’s public school system is thinking seriously about jumping on board.

In two weeks, the Metro school board will get a final report and recommendation from a committee created to explore a “standard school attire” policy. “Standard school attire” (SSA) is a euphemism for requiring kids to go to school dressed like stockbrokers having a weekend lunch at the club (khaki pants or skirts, collared polo shirts, that sort of thing).

This is the second time in less than a year that Metro schools director Pedro Garcia has put a proposal for cosmetic reform in front of the school board by enlisting a friendly study committee to generate a proposal. Last fall it was an overhaul of the school calendar—a loopy idea that the school board rejected after it became apparent that there was dubious community backing for it and virtually no research support for its benefits. The research evidence on SSA is no more convincing.

Advocates of school uniforms point to a number of potential benefits: achievement gains, less violence, reduced behavior problems, heightened school pride, increased attendance, decreased substance abuse, more student preparedness, less gang activity, increased student self-esteem and maybe even a halt to global warming. They see uniforms as a way to reassume control of learning environments that currently put kids at risk, both academically and as a matter of safety.

At least that’s the theory. And it’s a nice theory, but unlike other nice theories—such as, say, evolution, gravity and global warming—there’s almost no hard evidence for this one. Arguments for the virtues of school uniforms turn out to be mostly anecdotal and speculative. A school system somewhere mandates uniforms, some people involved in the system make animated pronouncements about how well it all seems to be going, and voila!—anecdotal evidence that uniforms work.

One such piece of “evidence” that gets a lot of airtime is the case of Long Beach, Calif., which in 1994 became the first large urban public school system in the U.S. to require uniforms in kindergarten through eighth grade. Uniform enthusiasts regularly mention Long Beach as a success story: within a few years after requiring school uniforms in grades K through 8, school violence was markedly down and attendance was way up.

School uniform opponents say that the improvements there weren’t necessarily a result of the new attire policy. Other significant school reforms were introduced in Long Beach at the same time, including a major grant devoted to alternative teaching strategies and a broad reassessment of academic content standards. It is unlikely, skeptics say, that uniforms were the sole factor, or even the main factor, for the improvements.

With the Long Beach experiment getting a lot of buzz, Bill Clinton’s 1996 comment prompted a mini-movement around public school dress codes. Some experts started to wonder if there were any actual evidence to justify the enthusiasm. David Brunsma, a sociologist now working at the University of Missouri, decided to study the issue after reading about Clinton’s remark.

In 1998, Brunsma and his colleague Kerry Ann Rockquemore published in the Journal of Educational Research a widely cited study of school uniforms using a nationally representative dataset and focusing on 10th graders. They looked at possible links between uniforms and several outcomes that uniform boosters point to: attendance, behavior problems, substance abuse and academic achievement.

The connections they found? None. Zilch. But there was one notable finding: students who were required to wear uniforms showed an almost 3-point decline (yes, decline) in standardized test scores. Subsequent analyses piled on the (lack of) evidence: no significant effects whatsoever for school uniforms on school climate, student achievement or attendance outcomes in grades 10, 8 and kindergarten.

Brunsma’s interest in the subject culminated in a 2004 book, The School Uniform Movement and What it Tells Us About American Education, in which he observes that the number of schools with mandatory uniform policies is 15 times what it was in the 1980s, with the drive to put kids in uniforms focused on disadvantaged and minority schools and districts. Brunsma insists that the push for uniforms is “rooted in pure speculation, without any scientific evidence to support anecdotal arguments for its effectiveness.”

Opponents of uniforms aren’t against it just because there’s no evidence for it; they also worry about issues of rights, class and money. How does enforced conformity in student attire, they wonder, cultivate the kind of individualism and creativity that are the hallmarks of an educated person? There are also concerns about student rights to free expression. While there is little doubt that reasonable public school dress codes can pass constitutional muster, such policies risk legal challenges if they don’t offer parents the opportunity to seek exemptions on religious grounds. Some school districts (including Long Beach) let kids opt out of the uniform requirements with parental consent regardless of the reason.

Noting the emphasis on uniforms as a cure for what ails schools with poor and minority student populations, anti-uniformers worry about the ability of disadvantaged parents to afford standard attire—a concern that the SSA committee tried to address through visits to local clothing stores and analyses of uniform costs.

So if there’s no evidence that uniforms work, why is Metro’s study committee on school attire expected to recommend uniforms later this month? The committee—seven Metro school principals, three parents and a student—started work last summer with only principals on board; parents and a student were added many months later. Metro schools spokeswoman Diane Long says the committee initially included only principals “because there was considerable background work to be done in developing a plan for the research.” She adds that “it’s hard to include students on a committee that meets during the school day.” Parent member Mark Schoenfield says that by the time he came on board in early winter, the panel had completed most of its analysis.

Does this mean that Garcia stacked the deck in favor of uniforms? You make the call.

The committee’s first interim report in October cited data from a national survey of school board members as evidence for gains in attendance and achievement, but neglected to mention until months later that this was a very low-response survey conducted by a school uniform manufacturer (no conflict of interest there). The committee in its second report labeled Long Beach “the gold standard in standard attire research,” without acknowledging that a single example sets no research standard at all. The third report in January mentioned “compelling research to show standard school attire can improve the learning climate and overall student safety in our schools” even as published academic research says otherwise.

The panel in late February finally acknowledged David Brunsma’s uniform-unfriendly published research, but them seemed to dismiss it as “the only national study with such conclusions.” The committee concluded that “there is very little conclusive research on this question” when in fact there is ample and clear evidence—that uniforms have none of the effects the panel apparently wishes they had.

After this sort of disingenuous “study,” it’s hard to expect anything other than an enthusiastic recommendation for a system-wide uniform policy when the panel makes its final report to the school board later this month. Schoenfield, the study committee parent member, says the school principals on the panel “are so passionately in favor of implementing an SSA policy that they have been guided by that desire, rather than any dispassionate exploration of the evidence…. What was meant to be fact-finding morphed into propaganda when they realized that no solid evidence supported a district-wide implementation.” Schoenfield resigned from the committee last week.

As the Scene goes to press, the school system is tallying the results of a telephone survey of public school households on SSA. The survey itself was arguably misleading, since it didn’t make clear to parents that the status quo doesn’t forbid standard attire. As it is, each school in Metro can decide for itself whether to require uniforms, and in fact one school—Isaac Litton Middle—implemented SSA for the current academic year. (Litton’s principal, Tonya Hutchinson, is one of the co-chairs of the SSA study committee). The survey asked parents to choose only between “standard attire at all schools” and “leave current policy in place.” The parent survey may be ambiguous, but what’s clear is student scorn for the idea: a survey of Hillsboro High School students last fall found 75 percent opposing SSA and fewer than 12 percent in favor.

The logic behind SSA is unmistakable. Given a school system plagued with mediocre academic performance, stubborn gaps in achievement by race and class, dismal graduation and college enrollment rates, staff morale problems and persistent funding woes, the remedy is obvious: blow off the research evidence and make ’em all dress alike.