By Dr. Tim Grivois
I’ll be posting on Instagram a short video about dress code, an area where we often see trans/female/queer/bipoc students dramatically over-represented in discipline referral data. While dress code may not seem like an important issue at your school, it may be an area where unconscious bias leads to ‘built-in’ inequity. If you and your team are ready to address your school dress code data, take a look at the framework below.
Step 1: Use your data. Who is most affected by dress code enforcement?
Most schools implementing Positive Behavior Interventions and Support will use SWIS, and almost every school has a digital database to store behavior data, including dress code referrals. Run a report by race, ethnicity, gender, and grade to uncover who is most affected by dress code enforcement.
Step 2: What are the most affected students wearing that generates referrals for dress code?
Pretend we looked at our data and discovered that female-identified students are generating the most referrals for dress code. Before we try to design any kind of solution, it’s important to know what problem we’re solving. Be as clear as you can about what kind of clothing prompts staff to report a dress code violation. For now, let’s pretend we looked at our data and found out that the most affected students are wearing crop tops.
Step 3: What problem is the ‘problem-clothing’ causing? For whom?
Keeping with our crop top example, if students are wearing crop tops and crop tops aren’t allowed, why is this a problem at school? Whose learning, if any, do crop tops impede?
If we can’t answer the question ourselves, we won’t be able to explain our reasons to students. Sometimes, we even discover that we don’t have a good reason…this saves us a ton of work by not caring about things that aren’t really issues. Until we are clear about why we would be willing to shift resources away from learning towards crop-top enforcement, we won’t be able to engage our PBIS strategies effectively.
Step 4: Work your PBIS strategies.
Prevention
What can we do to prevent dress code violations? Sometimes, the best way to prevent dress code violations is to rewrite the dress code, especially when we can’t find a good reason to enforce parts of it.
Other schools will provide access to school-appropriate clothes through an on-site clothing bank. One school I worked with had a student arriving out of uniform for weeks, only to discover that the family had no access to laundry. They solved that problem at school, ultimately transforming what initially seemed like an ongoing behavior issue with an equity solution.
Teaching
Explain what your dress code aims to accomplish. We all have different kinds of clothes we wear in different settings. If your goal is professionalism, say so. If the goal is safety, explain how. (If the main effect, however, is policing female/trans/queer/bipoc bodies, however, it’s probably time to address our own implicit/explicit bias.)
Corrective Consequence
Some schools will have clothes available for students. I like this idea so long as the goal is to help rather than shame. Asking students to change into something ugly is a cruel consequence and has no place in a #PBIS system. Whatever you choose to do, an effective corrective consequence clearly describes how you want school adults to behave when encountering a student out of dress code. What words do you want them to say? Where should the conversation happen? How do you want the student to solve the problem? A corrective consequence always provides students a path towards a better outcome and a stronger relationship with school adults.
Hint: Write the script in advance. It really helps to maintain the kind, helpful, warm tone we want.
Hint 2: Be open to discover that the dress code issue you’re addressing isn’t really that important to learning.
Be intentional to be equitable.
Almost everywhere schools exist, dress codes tend to impact female/trans/queer students far more than students in general. Whether individually or on our own, reflecting on why the dress code exists and how we can support students in meeting equitable, appropriate, and useful expectations is essential in ensuring equity in school discipline.