A Columbia Board of Education member wants to test whether making students wear uniforms can boost their achievement and decrease behavioral problems.

"If it’s a way to decrease academic disparity and increase achievement, I think we ought to at least be thinking about it," said school board Vice President Darin Preis, who pitched the idea during yesterday’s board retreat.

Superintendent Phyllis Chase said administrators looked at school uniforms as part of the model school program at West Boulevard Elementary School and opted against it. They didn’t want uniforms to skew data from other curriculum and program changes, she said.

Now that the model school has been in place for three years, board members questioned whether West Boulevard would be a good place to try uniforms as a pilot program.

"I think that would be a good way to test it out," Preis said, adding he’d rather see a school step forward and volunteer to test uniforms. "I would love it if someone came to us. It’s not something I want to have to push."

Preis points to the National School Boards’ Association Web site, which reported that uniform policies improve achievement and make schools safer.

But a University of Missouri-Columbia sociology professor said the data don’t bear that out. "The bottom line is there isn’t any empirical evidence supporting claims that uniforms raise achievement or curb behavioral problems," said David Brunsma, who has researched the effect of uniforms for the past decade. "It is true uniforms aren’t disastrous. … But the research hasn’t found that they do any good, either."

School districts like uniform policies because they provide an immediate and visible change, Brunsma said, but they do nothing about race or gender. Uniforms don’t solve status problems, he said, because more affluent families can afford multiple uniforms while poor children might have to wear the same uniform from day to day.

Columbia Public Schools asked patrons about the concept of school uniforms during community forums held in the fall. Twenty-eight percent of those who participated in that survey said they were very interested in looking at uniforms, 30 percent said somewhat interested and 36 percent said they were not interested at all.

Also during yesterday’s retreat:

● Preis suggested the district consider a year-round school calendar.

Right now, the St. Francis Howell School District in the St. Louis area is the only school in Missouri that has a year-round calendar, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokesman Jim Morris said. Elementary children there rotate nine weeks of school and three-week vacations to make up the 174-day calendar, which is what the state will fund, Morris said.

Preis cited data showing that during the long summer break children lose some of what they’ve learned. He also noted that high-achieving countries, such as Singapore, have year-round school.

"Columbia of all places, we need to be thinking outside the box," Preis said. "There’s tons of research about education. Let’s apply it instead of just talking about it."

● School board member Michelle Gadbois suggested the district create a teachers group that could regularly meet with administrators.

The group could be made up of members of existing teachers’ organizations but would not be affiliated with the Columbia Community Teachers Association or the Columbia chapter of the National Education Association, she said.

● Board President Karla DeSpain said she would like to see students get more physical activity during the school day.

She asked administrators to see whether movement could be incorporated into curriculum in addition to physical education classes and recesses.

● Member David Ballenger said he wanted the board to hold more than one retreat a year. Board members agreed to hold another retreat in January.

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