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The school board of the Shadow valley unified school (SVUS) district included these remarks in a letter sent to the families of all students attending school in the district.
Over the past few years, an increase in disciplinary problems and a high drop out rate have plagued district schools. The Ash lake school district to our north adopted a mandatory uniform policy three years ago. Since that time, suspensions and expulsions in Ash Lake have fallen by 40%, while the mean grade has increased from 2.3 (C+) to 2.7(B-). In order to improve the discipline and academic performance of shadow valley students, we have adopted a mandatory uniform policy effective on the first day of the new school year.
Ash lake district school may have witnessed better discipline and improvement in grades but the author of this article makes certain unsubstantiated assumption about the attributes that let this condition happen. Based on these assumptions the author takes the decision of adopting mandatory school uniform. Though it is intended to achieve greater discipline and better grades in the school these may fail to achieve the desired results because of some intrinsic fallacies.
I would like to critic the author, averring that by simply changing the uniform one cannot come to the conclusion that the discipline as well as the grades of the student improved. This statement seems to be specious in the first sight and the remarks given by the author look unsubstantiated. The reason for the better discipline can be attributed to many other reasons. One such reason may be that a new principal has come to the school and he is a stickler for discipline. So students play fewer pranks on each other or abstain from other mischiefs. Other reason may be that a new policy may have been adopted by the school administration according to which if a student was suspended from the school then he won’t be admitted back to school. This fear of expulsion has created more discipline in the college. Another point is that three-year is not sufficient enough time to come to a conclusion that a change in uniform led to better discipline. The association of dress with discipline seems vague.
The other fallacy in the author’s statement is that he relates dress with grades but it is not substantiated. How can one relate dress with grades when they are entirely different aspects? It may be that the school made a new policy according to which easy papers were set up so as to give a name to the school or a new lenient grading policy was implemented. It may also be that students were given much homework or there parents paid extra attention that led to better grades of students.
Other statement that seems to be ambiguous is the use of the term “mean grade point average” rising from 2.3(c+) to 2.7(B-). The use of “mean” here is specious because mean is the average of the class so it cannot be the progress of individual student. It may be that some students were doing very well and the others were doing poorly. It may also be that the students themselves developed a sense of responsibility and so abstained from mischiefs and paid more attention to studies in order to excel academically.
So the steps taken by SVUS school board seems to be inadequate and if the school administration really want to ameliorate the discipline and the grades of the students they should delve into the matter genuinely and gather the real causes which led to the change.
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