{"id":2475,"date":"2010-09-22T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T13:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2010-09-22T09:18:35","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T13:18:35","slug":"julie-janssen-channels-bill-clinton-circa-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=2475","title":{"rendered":"Julie Janssen channels Bill Clinton circa 1995"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wow: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/education\/k12\/pinellas-schools-chief-proposes-mandatory-uniforms-and-other-changes\/1123116\">Pinellas County superintendent Julie Janssen is proposing mandatory uniforms<\/a> for K-8 students as a way to respond to concerns about achievement and in a week when the St. Pete Times has been slamming the school system with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/education\/k12\/pinellas-school-administrator-janet-hernandez-didnt-disclose-link-to\/1122944\">stories of alleged nepotism<\/a> committed by an administrator Janssen wanted appointed as the dropout-program coordinator for the district.<\/p>\n<p>First, let&#39;s get the research reference out of the way: there is no serious evidence that uniforms have any beneficial effects on achievement, behavior, or anything else that&#39;s been studied by <a href=\"http:\/\/sociology.missouri.edu\/New%20Website%20WWW\/Faculty%20and%20Staff\/David_Brunsma.htm\">David Brunsma<\/a> and the small group of other researchers who have done anything on the topic. Some parents may appreciate it as a structural parenting crutch so they don&#39;t argue with their children over what to wear to school, but it serves largely symbolic purposes rather than having any concrete effect on student outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Given the news coverage this week, my first inclination is to applaud Janssen for ripping a page from Bill Clinton&#39;s playbook. If you don&#39;t remember what the political environment was like in 1995, after Republicans swept the 1994 elections, Clinton&#39;s policy initiatives moved from the gigantic (health-care reform) to the tiny. And the epitome of 1995 Clinton smallball was his applauding the school district of Long Beach, California, for requiring uniforms. It was inconsequential, pushed a lot of buttons, and was an attempt to distract the public from his political problems.<\/p>\n<p>I will now make a bold prediction: ignoring the research that exists on the topic, the Pinellas County school board will approve mandatory school uniforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow: Pinellas County superintendent Julie Janssen is proposing mandatory uniforms for K-8 students as a way to respond to concerns about achievement and in a week when the St. Pete Times has been slamming the school system with stories of alleged nepotism committed by an administrator Janssen wanted appointed as the dropout-program coordinator for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy","category-florida"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-DV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2477,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}