In 1994, the Long Beach California School district started mandating school uniforms for all 58,500 elementary and middle school students. According to a manual produced by the U.S. Department of Education, one year after the implementation district officials found that the school's overall violence decreased by 36 percent, fights decreased 51 percent, sex offenses decreased 74 percent, weapons offenses decreased 50 percent, assault and battery offenses decreased 34 percent and vandalism decreased 18 percent. In a time when children and teenagers are already facing many difficult issues, uniforms help eliminate another major concern fitting in. Uniforms place more emphasis on the person inside than the clothes they are wearing. Students who cannot afford the name brands no longer have to dread going to school when they know everybody is wearing the same thing they are.
Uniforms also place more importance on education.
Students can focus on learning and not on what the girl or boy next to them is wearing. In Seattle, Wash., school officials implemented a similar plan in 1995 in their South Shore Middle School of 900 students. The administration found there was a large decrease in the amount of money parents had to spend on their children's wardrobe when they attended a school that required uniforms. The U.S. Department of Education also reported that this difference was up to 80 percent. Uniforms are not a panacea to all the problems facing schools today.