Uniform use in public schools is rising, but we know little about how they affect students. Using a unique dataset from a large urban school district in the southwest United States, we assess how uniforms affect behavior, achievement and other outcomes. Each school in the district determines adoption independently, providing variation over schools and time. By including student and school fixed-effects we find evidence that uniform adoption improves attendance in secondary grades, while in elementary schools they generate large increases in teacher retention.
Acknowledgements and Disclosures
We gratefully acknowledge funding and support from the American Education Finance Association New Scholars Award. We also thank Aimee Chin, Steven Craig, Julie Berry Cullen, Chinhui Juhn, Melinda Sandler Morrill, Stuart Rosenthal, two anonymous referees and seminar and conference participants at the Institute for Research on Poverty Summer Research Workshop, University of California - San Diego, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Houston Center for Public Policy, Texas Camp Econometrics, as well as the American Education Finance Association and Southern Economic Association annual meetings. Finally, we thank Mykhailo Sitiuk for excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.