July 30, 2024
Although Bessemer’s leaders claimed that the new dress code is being put in place to protect students, research shows that these kinds of rules do not make kids feel healthy but rather that they are being targeted.
Alabama’s for its pupils, which excludes pants, Crocs, clothes with cavities, and gown dresses, in addition to regular exclusions like open-toed slides and sunglasses.
Principal Stoney Pritchett and Counselor Tahuna Thomas shared with WBRC that their goal with the gown code is to offer students to a realistic standard that might include things that individuals would prefer to use to ensure their safety.
As Principal Pritchett told the shop,” Oftentimes at the high school, we have training, we have tornado training, fire training, and wind training”, Pritchett said. We must “line up and leave and stuff like that.” We want to ensure that children are protected while walking throughout the building. Other things happen as well that the school ca n’t prevent. Because the university is responsible, we just want to make certain nobody gets hurt in their foot or ankle, and we also want to make sure all is safe.
Although there is nothing in the noted regulations that seem unfair, in 2022, US News & World Report reported that the protection of these procedures usually benefits in more women, Black, and other students of color being punished.
As Bessemer’s leaders indicated, most dress codes are reportedly instituted to guarantee student protection. However, research has shown that these guidelines do n’t create feelings of security for students, but rather that they create one-on-one attacks.
In 2022, the Government Accountability Office stated that. It was not shocking to her that this was frequently the case, according to Courtney Mauldin, an associate professor of education management at the Syracuse University School of Education.
It’s hardly surprising that the majority of the students in the schools where clothing is over-policing and dress codes are enforced, Mauldin said. ” There’s a lot of conventional, antiquated thoughts around what it has to look like to do class. And I think people have good intentions, but they’re really slow to change when it rubs off against what they’ve known”.
Mauldin continued,” Are we really targeting clothes, or is this particular to targeting a child’s identity? Because if we’re targeting student’s identities, then we’re sending a message that you do n’t belong here and you’re disrupting the space simply by being, and that’s not the message that we want to send to students, especially if schools are supposed to be these places of learning and joy and belonging”.
According to the GAO statement,” Universities that enforce strict dress codes are associated with mathematically important higher levels of exclusive discipline—that is, procedures that remove individuals from the classroom, such as in-school punishments, out-of-school punishments, and evictions. This is true even after controlling for student demographics, school type, size, geography, and measures of school climate, such as levels of disorder and the presence of security personnel”.
Exclusionary discipline is linked to student outcomes that are both short- and long-term harmful, including higher rates of dropouts and incarceration, according to the report. For example, our prior work showed that boys, Black students, and students with disabilities are disproportionately disciplined across discipline types, including exclusionary discipline.
Additionally, according to the report, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to experience harsher academic punishment than their counterparts for the same offense. According to a study, Black students were seven times more likely than White students to receive exclusionary discipline. The report cited concerns that, overall, dress codes may lead to more disparities in school discipline for Black students. District officials and national organizations we spoke with agreed with these findings.
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