Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Barry / Education MNPS Attire: Seven Schools Opt Out
Posted by Bruce Barry on Wed, May 6, 2009 at 2:30 PM
- Hillsboro High
- Hume-Fogg Magnet High
- Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet
- Meigs Magnet Middle
- MNPS Middle College High
- Nashville Big Picture High School
- Nashville School of the Arts
To opt out a principal had to give reasons and also show support from students, parents and staff. It's hard not to notice that opt-outers, aside from Hillsboro, are all magnet and special schools. Why only these making the ask? Perhaps they're the schools where skepticism to SSA by parents and teachers was strongest from the outset, but your guess is as good as mine.
Research evidence is clear that school uniforms fail to improve school outcomes, and MNPS officials have offered no persuasive evidence that SSA yields positive outcomes in Nashville either behaviorally or academically. We do know that SSA is costly to parents and time-wasting for teachers and administrators who have to police it. Nonetheless, stakeholders at most schools in the system are apparently content to stick with it. As a parent at one of the opt-out seven, I'm glad to be free of this nonsense.
Comments (26)
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Way to keep it objective, Bruce.
Now let's just get your goofy caricature on the school uniform picture for the Scene-smugness-win.
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Free at last from the tyranny of SSA. What a ridiculous waste of time and money that was. The argument that it 'saves money' was obviously made by people who do not have kids. My kids had two wardrobes: their SSA clothes and the clothes they changed into the second they got home from school. I wonder how much of an effort was made at other schools to gage parent opinion. Also, and I should know this, was it just high schools given the opt-out option? Does Hillsboro mean just the high school or the whole cluster?
Maybe these schools can donate all the khaki items and polo shirts they had to purchase that their kids will never wear again to the schools that did not opt out.
Hillsboro means just the high school. All schools K-12 were given the option.
What the district did not do, of course, is communicate directly with parents to tell them that the opt-out option existed and required grass-roots support. MNPS freely uses its robocall system and mail-home newsletters to disseminate its own propaganda, but apparently won't use these communication systems to inform parents of an opportunity to affect school-level policy in an alternative direction. Keep it low key, set an early deadline, and hope nobody notices. That's how they (still) roll down on Bransford Avenue.
It's easy to see why magnet schools would drop out of the SSA program--they don't get any real benefit from having a strict dress code. Arguably, none of the schools benefit, but that's another matter.
At its core, SSA tells schools to strip away the students' right of free expression in favor of reducing violence and distractions. But in magnet schools, and I say this as an alum of two of the seven schools on that list, those problems don't exist in the same way that they might at Hillwood or Stratford. I'm sure the parents, students and administration of these schools see no need to limit students' rights in order to fix a problem that doesn't exist in their schools. I also doubt that these schools actively enforced the SSA dress code. I remember a story on Newschannel5 about HFA students attempting to creatively get around the policy so that they could retain at least some of their self-expression.
Why only these making the ask?
We aren't used to things getting in the way of instruction like sending kids to the office for stripes.
What the district did not do, of course, is communicate directly with parents to tell them that the opt-out option existed and required grass-roots support.
Nor did they communicate a clear opt out procedure to any school. Mine, one on the list, pushed central office to let us know how. We did surveys on our own because we knew they'd want data; we didn't wait on them to tell us how. If we had waited, we'd still have the policy.
I'm sure the parents, students and administration of these schools see no need to limit students' rights in order to fix a problem that doesn't exist in their schools.
Exactly, although include a majority of teachers, too.
At its core, SSA tells schools to strip away the students' right of free expression in favor of reducing violence and distractions.
That might be the theory (or more accurately the hope), but we have yet to see convincing empirical evidence, either in Nashville or elsewhere, that SSA reduces violence.
Nice. You and your elitist buddies have finally made it happen so that only "those children" have to dress nice. All the middle and upper class kids get to dress any way they want so that their "creative juices" can flow.
Excellent, now the nice white elite schools can let their students dress in the conformist uniforms of the hour while schools that educate less fortunate kids will continue to enforce students dressing like they mean to get an education.
We poor, undeserving Nashvillians always appreciate help from people who sell their counter culture papers to huge conglomerates.
Tell us more about how we should do things Bruce.
As one of those who worked day and night---albeit from Phoenix---with npass and Charles Badger to stop SSA in the first place, this is limited good news. But I suggest there IS hope for schools that STILL want to opt-out. In Calif, state law requires parent opt-out--but San Fran & Long Beach did NOT notify parents of the option. ACLU sued and the schools there immediately caved. The opt-out "Policy" of Metro is the SAME as a law; I suspect a threatened suit would give spme additional schools the opportunity to STILL opt-out.
NOtE that in MOST places where opt-out is allowed, individual PARENTS can opt out THEIR kids even at SSA/uni schools---as long as they obey the regular dress code;---see laws in Calif & Wisc. & school bd policy in Miami, Fla & NYC ammong others. So what is REALLY needed is INDIVIDUAL opt-out EVEN at schools where a majority still want unis; BELIEVE IT OR NOT, such programs DO work---including at the ORIGINAL mand-uni district--Long Beach, Calif, where there are at least a few opt-outs mixed in with uni-clad kids at ALMOST EVERY CAMPUS.
I find it interesting Karl Warden, that next school year your family is taking your child from Hillwood, an SSA school and sending him to Hillsboro, a non-SSA school. Perhaps you should rethink that if you are so angry at the elitists since under your definition, Hillsboro is full of them.
The truth is that 7 schools opted out and all but 10 of the 125 or so schools left asked for modifications. There is just no broad community support for the SSA policy as implemented two years ago.
What would be more fair to all students is to opt all schools out and then let those that choose opt back in, accomodating their community and local support. Wait, that WAS the original policy 3 years ago. And that is exactly where the district is heading as this policy unravels like the cheap, crappy clothes we were told to buy at Walmart.
Karl--
we fought like hell so that no students would have to suffer from this crap; blaming us for what mnps is doing to other kids is not justified...other parents apparently want it for their kids (and we offered at least half a dozen plans that would permit voluntary adoptions, that were smugly ignored--just as the research was) or else their administrators so disrespect them that they were not listened to (not a story unique to SSA).
But there is more good news--the mandatory punishments have been dropped, and now it is on each principal to set the punishments, and that means all parents can start exerting pressure at the ground level. Almost certainly by the end of next year, SSA will just be a shadow program or gone altogether. In the last two years, MNPS was unable to point to a single demonstrable good effect of MNPS, just as the research predicted.
well said, runsat...
The strongest corrolation for these schools, Bruce, is that these are the ones that actually consulted their parents. The elementary school principals decided just to ask one another and act as a collective mob. The other zoned schools were asked on the Thursday before Spring break to consult their parents and report back on monday of Spring break--so only the high schools that had been proactive and anticipated some trick like that had a chance.
So, wait, Karl- the parents who are ok with jeans and T-shirts are elitist and the ones who want their kids- and others' kids- to dress like private school preps are not the elitists? LOL
I started off firmly against SSA and came to a more nuanced view, concluding that both sides in some ways were badly out of touch.
At some schools, SSA really is useless and an imposition that contributes nothing to learning or achievement.
Yet during the public comments at school board meetings two years ago, I couldn't help but be moved by the way some parents so passionately asked for SSA. They believed that their kids were in chaotic school environments and were all for anything that would help bring order. Unfortunately, they had been sold a bill of goods by Pedro Garcia and a board that misrepresented research on the subject and convinced many people that SSA would reduce violence and gang activity and would facilitate better learning.
The two parent groups completely talked past each other. Many of the anti-SSA parents DID come across as elitist and out of touch, talking about limits to their kids' freedom of expression. Understandably, some of the parents from failing schools looked at them like they were from Neptune, because more freedom in their schools was exactly the wrong prescription, even if uniforms did nothing to improve test scores.
There is not much doubt that imposing discipline (of which SSA is one form) has been an important factor in turning around some troubled schools. It starts with a principal who is a strong leader and imposes an orderly environment for learning. The NY Times the other day ran an interesting story about a school in South Carolina that had been all but written off as incorrigible until the arrival of a young new principal who, among other things, reimposed corporal punishment with a paddle. As out of fashion as paddling is, and as disturbing as it remains to many, all stakeholders in the school (including students) seemed to agree that paddling had made an important contribution to creating an environment where kids could learn. There are many other anecdotal examples that don't necessarily involve corporal punishment but which show that much firmer and more consistent discipline has been an important ingredient in school turnarounds.
This suggests an argument for returning to the old policy that allowed schools on an individual basis to mandate standard attire.
On the other hand, I thought the most compelling argument for district-wide SSA was one that the board did not make until the battle lines were hardened, and then only feebly. The argument is that a school-by-school standard would leave kids at the SSA schools feeling branded as inferior or trouble-makers (and would create rifts between them and those kids whose schools were deemed successful enough that no SSA was necessary). This is a more realistic argument that it might seem at first blush, because neighborhood schools exist only loosely here as a concept. For example, in one square mile in North Nashville, you will find kids who attend Hillwood (designated by the state as a failing school), others who attend Pearl-Cohn (more segregated but not a failing school); Hume-Fogg; MLK; and Nashville School of the Arts.
The argument made by some parents and finally by several board members was, basically: "We're all in this together. We realize that some of your children may go to wonderful schools that really don't need SSA, but we're asking for our sakes that everybody do this together. It really won't hurt you to dress in standard attire, and we think it will really help us."
Unfortunately, as I said, Garcia and a couple of his board cronies, who pushed principals to praise the beauty of the superintendent's new clothes, cooked the evidence for SSA in a way that would have made Cheney and Rumsfeld proud. When the anti-SSA parents saw through the administration's transparent and manipulative efforts, the case for SSA lost all credibility with them. It was typical of Pedro's divisiveness, and it completely sabotaged the possibility for trust and some kind of mutual accommodation between the sides.
I have a kid who attends a magnet high school (which, ironically, makes me persona non grata both to the school board and to the board's mortal enemy, the heroic sans culottes who write about education issues for the Scene). I go by the school almost every day and notice what kids are wearing. Well before they announced they were opting out, the school took a very lax position on enforcing SSA. (Earlier this week, I saw a girl in a miniskirt that probably would have earned a trip to the principal's office under ANY dress code, let alone SSA). Yet I still see a number of kids (20-25%, I would guess) who are dressed in the standard attire. The great majority of the time, these kids are African American.
What this suggests to me is that the parents of these kids who still follow the standard attire do so at the insistence of their parents, perhaps so they don't stand out from other kids in their neighborhood who attend zoned schools where the policy is still enforced. Clearly, even at the magnet schools, some parents think SSA has value, or at least that people should conform to the rules even if they didn't agree with them.
I don't object to uniforms per se, even though I don't think they provide the benefits the board originally claimed. I do object to the way the board and previous director handled the whole situation.
When Fidel dies, I'm hoping Pedro can return to Havana and become Raul Castro's Raul Castro. It's the part he was born to play. Maybe he can persuade Ed Kindall to learn español and join him.
runsatthepool,
Aren't you a cowardly little piece of shit. Write about my child and won't even reveal your name.
Oh yes, he will be going to Hillwood for reasons totally unrelated to SSA. And, he will be wearing SSA at Hillwood.
Gosh, that's a lot of anger. I assume you meant Hillsboro, not Hillwood - but either way, you as a parent have the right to send your child anywhere you can if you think that choice is in your family's or child's best interest. And I don't care what your child wears, whether he prefers it or you have something to prove. There are other parents who feel it is not in their family's or child's best interest to wear SSA and they have the right to make that choice, if that choice is available to them. And at some schools it appears it is.
We likely agree on more than we disagree. Do I think the district has handled this situation well, in a fair manner? No. Do I think it will cause unnecessary friction in the community? Yes.
What I don't like is being called elitist because others do not agree with my viewpoint. It is class warfare at it's finest and it's tearing this community apart. I am not calling you names - you just vehemently disagree and I accept that.
I just pointed out that it's not nice to essentially call the parents at Hillsboro elitist when you will soon be part of their community because they made a decision that is different than yours. And I pointed out that there is no broad community support for SSA as implemented, which is true. And it is a failing policy by virtue of the many requests for modifications, which is true. And that this entire exercise has been a waste of time and goodwill when the district can afford neither.
Anon Bosch--
If all the arguments had been as reasoned as yours from the outset, I don't think we would ever have been in this mess.
But the research shows that for all schools, SSA does no good. Pretending it does is not a concession to social cohesion but a delusion, and it is unfair to ask parents to buy into delusions that their kids will instantly see through; students across the district lost faith in their school administrators who pretended SSA was good--parents can't foster the same pretence, especially those parents who operate based on reason and persuasion, and not fear and punishment. In many senses, the two groups talked past each other: we had very different conceptions of the rights of parents and students, of the value of punishment, of the goals and means of education, even of the role of religion in the schools. An open debate could have been genuinely productive: true, it would have meant no SSA, but it might have come up with ideas that might accomplish those things that SSA was "supposed" to do, even though it was well-known from the outset it wouldn't accomplish them. And to be honest, it couldn't have happened without an open debate about race and class, about the desertion of so many of the middle class to the private schools, about whether education is to produce workers for Nashville or citizens and college students.
There is no reality-based case "for" SSA; the argument of the "all in it together" would only matter if kids were stupid enough not to see that SSA was a branding, but these kids get it, and Garcia et al were quite explicit about their disdain for students.
There are desires (even desperation) to improve the schools on both sides of the SSA question, and it is a shame that SSA has been so divisive among folks who might otherwise have worked together.
Come on with it. SSA has been a nightmare. I have only one of my two children in shcool now, but anohter entering in the fall. It is not the schools job to dress my children, it is mine. As a single parent I am tired of being forced to buy two sets of clothes for my child and soon both children. Money is tight as it is and having to buy two sets of clothes does not help. Nothing I ever bought my children is revealing, inappropriate, or wrong for school. Why does the school district think it is necessary to tell me and my children what they can wear and that they have to tuck their shirts in to be dressed appropriately, they are girls and girls do not always have to tuck to be dreseed nicely. Please. Please lets get done with the mess the Pedro started and then let and has proably forgotten.
If you know about my family because you are a friend, don't count on being a friend anymore. You don't give out private information about my family without permission.
If you know about my family because you are a school official you are in violation of the law.
I am currently investigating how to force the Scene to divulge your name.
Karl:
I know who runsatthepool is, and I know this poster to be an honorable person.
There's nothing private about where your kids are going to school.
What you've revealed to me here through your posts is far more than you allege others have done to your family — namely, that your children have an idiot for a father.
Karl--
no worries, dude, nobody knows anything about you or your family or what your real name is...but wow, does all your anger show how much better the world--and your family--would be without the extra stress of SSA. Also true of the board members--SSA totally derailed the board for the last couple years, to the point that they virtually catatonically listened to total mis- and non-information presented by mnps and thanked them for being so informative. I do think, with Register, they are starting to wake up a bit...but they are still going to have a lot of time wasted on SSA as rogue princpals try to invent their own power-surge rules.
I must comment further in light of the comments after mine Wed nite. (No one mentioned my comment--maybe because you do not like Arizonans telling you what to do---but your State voted for McCain overwhelmingly. BTW, Obama's BLACK kids do NOT wear unis---either at the U of Chicago Lab School where they used to go or the private D.C. school they now go to.)
But let me be frank---MUCH of this IS about race and class, as I said privately to my Nashville friends in an e-mail last night. You see, as a long-time ACLU Bd member, we have almost NO black or Hispanic members; civil liberties is the "interest of choice" MAINLY by upper-class, largely Jewish whites like me. When you have kids out of control, not interested in school, and the family is barely earning enough for food---I would NOT expect you to be MUCH interested in Freedom of Expression.
So I DO understand the desire of parents in the "non-elite" areas to want new methods of disciplining their kids, many of whom wore their jeans slung-low in "hip-hop" fashion. BUT, unlike programs like STAND AND DELIVER, the PROBLEM, folks, is that UNIFORMS DO NOT WORK TO DO SO!!!
All SSA did was ban LEGITIMATE, APPROPRIATE clothing like Sen. Alexander's plaid shirt, Sen. Thompson's campaign jeans and the striped tee shirts my peers wore in elementary and HS in Phoenix in the 1950's---a rather CONSERVATIVE era, all agree. Indeed, IF there was a need for uniformity (there is NOT---DIVERSITY is what America is all about), the "uniform" should INDEED have consisted of tees and jeans---NOT khakis and polos. For some strange reason, tees & jeans are considered "gang clothing" or whatever these days; almost NO uni programs involve such clothes.
Yet, all of this is ABSURD. Look at what DETENTION centers make their kids wear--almost all are in jeans & tees; have you ever seen an inmate in a polo???? Indeed, such is considered a "perk" in progressive detention centers, and it is the GOOD kids---not the bad---who are "allowed" to wear polos instead of tees there. And in dress-code schools, when a kid of either sex wears an inappropriate top, the "remedy" in 99 per cent of the schools is to give them an ugly TEE to wear over the top; NO SCHOOL I EVER heard of requires that "bad" tops be covered by a polo!! Further, khakis can be bought JUST AS OVERSIZED (and thus SAGGY) as jeans. Didn't ANYONE on the SSA side EVER think of THAT???
As some other posters have pointed out, the SSA fight became one of power/control by the Admin as well as class/race warfare among Nashville parents. The REAL FACTS--as shown by Mark's and Charles' research reports--were NOT in dispute; uniforms just DO NOT solve gang, academic, discipline or attendance problems.
The predecessor to this fight was in Phoenix in 1995 at one middle school that spent $250,000 of Tax $$ JUST to exclude TWO honor-roll kids who wanted to wear admittedly-appropriate non-uniform street clothes. We did NOT oppose the uni program per se; we JUST asked for PARENT opt-out---but the board decided to go to war instead. Now, 14 years later, the $10 million brand-new school is CLOSING as a public school; despite being run in recent years by a "born-again-uniformer" who used to work for ME when I was on the HS Board, attendance and enrollment has collapsed and the school is being sold for a private, charter K-8 school. ALL the kids will be bused to NON-uniform schools which are adding 7th & 8th grades to them.
Paraphrasing Shakespeare, the Phx Prep flap here was all "sound & fury, signifying nothing." In Nashville, your similarly-foolish fight was waged under false pretenses for a laudable goal through CLEARLY-ABSURD MEANS.
Finally, this all would have been over sooner if the HS kids in Nashville had done what I counseled---flatly refuse to wear SSA and all go in Titans or other TN team logo tees and WELL-fitted jeans and/or replicas of Sen. Alexander's plaid shirt (which was forbidden (because of its multi-colors). The kids could hasve BROKEN the SSA system in a day that way---but THEIR wimpymness delayed the demise of this nonsense till now. SAD. Remember, NASHVILLE--not N.C. where it started---was the FIRST city to cave in to the Negro lunch-counter sit-ins in 1960 because of the leadership of your then-Mayor. If the kids HERE on SSA had refused to conform, I suspect your current Mayor might have solved the SSA issue similarly although he had no legal power to do so.
It is a pity that we have to always learn things the HARD way. Remember---THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS; SSA is just the LATEST example of THAT rule./gpk--e-mail-- GaryK57647@aol.com
Wow. Where were you guys when I was complaining loudly about this at special ed meetings, Hill meetings and Hillwood meetings and any MNPS meetings where I could get a voice? I guess I was stuck with people who supported it. Register even told me publicly that most parents liked it. Teachers told me it was ridiculous. They could not enforce it or they'd be doing it all day. From a special education parent perspective, it diminished a way my child could express herself. We had to buy extras at cheap places I refused to shop at bc she tore her shirts and wet her pants. I've sent my child to school every day the last two years in vanilla, generic clothing. She had no way to tell me that her peers were bending the rules and had little ways to create cliches by purchasing certain brands and wearing certain combinations. It was supposed to make her and every one else blend it and for us it had the opposite effect. Plus, it cost me so much money. From the get-go, special education parents dreaded this idea. There were horror stories, we'd anticipated such as the child sent to the office bc his mother forgot to put his belt on before she sent him off on the special ed bus in his wheel chair. The belts. Some of our children lack the motor skills to use them. I asked and received an exemption, but many parents did not think or know to. That meant you had adults fastening the belts of students. Great precedent for a population where 98 percent are taken advantage of sexually. Thank God I've transferred her to a school where individuality is valued. And I'll be amongst others who value it as well. Sigh.
"Gary Klahr":
These KIDS are just THAT, kids. It's ridiculous that one could EVEN think to imply that this problem is THEIR fault, due to their "wimpyness" or any OTHER reason.
Encouraging these kids to try and BREAK the system is just ENCOURAGING them to go around the protocols that polite society has set up and ENDANGER their FUTURES.
Schools wouldn't have gotten rid of SSA if students had refused to wear it. Students did refuse to wear the clothes, and that got them in DETENTION, as well as SUSPENDED, which wreaked havoc with their GPAs, further causing PROBLEMS with their FUTURES.
We're both on the non-SSA side, but I SERIOUSLY cannot say that I am proud to be on the same side as YOU are.
Don't foist this on the kids. They fought back as much as POSSIBLE without being STUPID and endangering their futures.
I don't know if it's an innate Arizona thing, but if you're so eager to effect change in schools, you should start acting a little more like an adult. It's pretty easy to mistake you as a child. A child who paraphrases Shakespeare and misuses his or her SHIFT key.
I was mocking you with my copious capitalization.
I realize that might not have translated.
But hey! I'm allowed to be immature. And wimpy. After all, I am a high school student. I guess my stupidity stems from my inability to challenge the system by wearing WELL-fitted jeans and a plaid shirt.
And as for your positively sickening glorification of jeans and T-shirts, obviously you missed the lesson in high school about seeing both sides of an issue.
I apologize for picking on you. My collar must be a little too tight.
