As educators worry increasingly about safety, school officials are refocusing their attention on dress codes. Bare belly buttons and baggy pants are out, khakis and polo shirts are in.
Uniforms are in but emphasize comfort over formality.
Even see-through backpacks are making an appearance. Schools once enforced dress codes to ensure that students looked tidy and proper as they learned lessons. He believes dress codes peaked in the 1960s and early 1970s, then faded and now are back again. The trend toward uniforms in public schools began in the early 1990s. Land's End found 13 percent of schools had uniform policies and another 15 percent were considering uniforms.