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No School Uniforms

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No School Uniforms
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"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin once said this, and I think It applies well to the proposed implementations of a uniform.
Today, my worthy opponents try to persuade us to change our school dress code to involve a uniform. We must realize that this would not be a solution to our schools' problems in Tazewell County, but perhaps another problem that we as students have to worry about. In 2002, Adolfo Santos did a study to see how school uniforms really affected students' behaviors in Huston, Texas. He calculated the percentages of in school and out of school suspension rates for before and after the uniforms were implemented. His statistics showed that in school suspension rates were dropping greatly before the uniforms were assigned. They dropped from 40% two years prior, to 30% the year before the students began wearing uniforms. Amazingly, that year the punishments rose back up to 49%. The out of school suspensions also rose 10% in the first year after uniforms, and 13% in the second. Since percentages are a bit confusing in this case, here is how Santos obtained them, "The suspension rates are a function of the number of times the school reported in-school suspensions and out-of-school suspensions divided by the total number of students in the school. For example, a school that has 1,000 students and reports 100 in-school suspensions would have an in-school suspension rate of 10 percent." In another study conducted in 1998 by David L. Brunsma, from the University of Alabama, and Kerry A. Rockquemore, from Notre Dame states that, "Tenth grade data from The National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 was used to test empirically the claims made by uniform advocates. The findings indicate that student uniforms have no direct effect on substance use, behavioral problems, or attendance. Contrary to current

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