Rahm Emanuel wants to require acceptance letters for high school graduation

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

This is up there with school uniforms as bad ideas.

What's wrong with school uniforms?

They can be an undue burden on poor students and family's, and they get rid of the individuality that all students should have and need.

There's nothing individualistic about what adolescents wear.

The adolescents think there is, and self-perception is important at that age. (N.B. I've never felt and still don't feel obliged to strong opinion on school uniforms as such.)

I'd make the argument that uniforms place less burden on the poor. Eliminates designer labels, allows for Two or three school uniforms to be used by a student, and often times they are cheaper and have assistance programs

Not to mention they erase overt class differences.

coming from a country with ubiquitous school uniforms and also a far more rigid class system than America, I would dispute that.

The one thing I will say about uniforms (as they exist in Britain) often have some sort of cargo cult thing going on behind them, where higher-ups get it into their head that merely reproducing the trappings of public schooling (NB: the British term for elite private schools, confusingly) like House systems fancier uniforms and AUTHORITARIANISM they will get Eton. Which leads to absurdities nowadays:

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/jan/21/secret-teacher-my-school-is-putting-style-over-substance

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/30/no-excuses-inside-britains-strictest-school

That said, I don't think I was particularly inconvenienced by my uniform. I lost my blazer and tie like fifty times, but there was a constant recycling through the lost property system so I never had to pay for it again. Which of course leads us to the point that uniforms don't really make kids better dressed or even avoid standing out from the ground. Show-offs still tease with the boundaries of the uniform regulations, the poorer kids still stood out by having ill-fitting uniforms (or generic blazers with the school badge stitched on)  etc. (even worse when enterprising headteachers try and put dress shirt, ties and blazers in primary schools - nothing more ridiculous than a five year old in a tie IMO). And of course, there is the problem of certain teachers having a bit too much interest in the length of girls' skirts.