SPECIAL REPORT * Three years ago, schools across L.A. embraced the idea of requiring youngsters to dress alike. But with few officials enforcing those policies, students . . . : Make a Fashion Statement

On the first day of class this fall, Mulholland Middle School sixth-grader Elizabeth Shamlian wore her new school uniform: blue trousers and a white, collared shirt.

Then she went home and told her parents, “I’m never going to wear this again.”

In the sea of youngsters who cross the open courtyards at Mulholland these days, nobody else is in uniform either.

Three years after coming into fashion, uniforms have not proved to be an elixir for Los Angeles city schools. The initial rush has slowed to a trickle.

In 1995, 314 Los Angeles city schools embraced the idea, more than any other public school district in the nation. Since then, only 40 more campuses have enlisted.

At many schools where uniforms were once the rage, the look has been pushed to the back of the closet.

Last week, the New York City Board of Education--which runs the only system in the nation larger than Los Angeles Unified School District--voted to require its half-million elementary school students to wear uniforms, beginning in 1999.

New Yorkers hope that uniforms will help keep students safe, inspire professionalism and reduce tardiness, disciplinary problems and materialism--the same kind of goals that swept through California’s education community in 1995 when the Legislature made it legal for public schools to require uniforms.

However, keeping a student body in uniform has been hampered by federal court rulings that have abolished mandatory policies on free speech grounds.

Any parent at a public school can allow their children to dress as they please. Without the support of parents, educators say, uniforms quickly disappear from campus.

Although uniforms are far from dead here, the notion that making all pupils dress alike would eliminate attacks on students wearing gang-affiliated colors or styles of clothing seems to have lost steam.

“It is not the overriding issue it was then,” said Mulholland’s principal, Alfredo Tarin. “There was this sense of urgency.”

Consider one L.A. Unified cluster of schools on the Eastside that includes Boyle Heights, Highland Park and El Sereno.

Of 18 campuses listed in district records as having uniforms, only one--Nightingale Middle School--reports that nearly all of its students wear them. Officials at four schools say half or more of their youngsters wear them.

At 10 other campuses, officials estimate that less than half of their students wear uniforms each day. Three schools say they have no uniforms at all.

When uniforms become, in effect, voluntary, “I don’t consider it to be a uniform policy,” said Randy Ward, state-appointed administrator of the Compton Unified School District who spurred the introduction of uniforms to Compton’s troubled schools this year.

“If some kids are wearing a uniform and others are not, they might as well be in Raiders jackets and Lakers jerseys.”

Experts say the benefits of school uniforms remain unproved and largely anecdotal.

Bill Modzeleski, director of Safe and Drug Free Schools for the Department of Education, said proper studies have been too difficult and expensive to conduct. Only about 3% of public schools have uniforms, he said.

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Long Beach Unified officials say behavior and punctuality have improved since 1994, when the district became the first public school system in the country to require uniforms. But educational experts say it is unclear what is responsible.

“Chances are that uniforms in a school are tied to other factors,” said Myron H. Dembo, a professor of education at USC who studies educational psychology. “The work that parents have to do to get the uniforms forced them to buy into and to support the school. Students could be in bikinis and, if the parents are supportive, the school will do better.”

There remain Los Angeles city schools where administrators inspect youngsters each morning, sending slackers to the office to change into loaner outfits. Although these advocates say uniforms form a shield against trouble, students roll their eyes at the rule.

“I don’t think the way you dress is gang-related,” said 13-year-old Laura Shebber, an eighth-grader at Fulton Middle School in Van Nuys. No parents at the school have opted out of the uniform requirement.

Shebber is a chronic dress code violator, who last week was forced to exchange her blue velour top for a white dress shirt with “Fulton” written on the back in permanent ink. “How you carry yourself is more important,” she said.

Los Angeles Unified set a goal three years ago of having uniforms at all of its 668 schools. So far, 354 city schools have a uniform policy, most of them elementary schools. Of those, the district cannot say how many students still wear uniforms every day.

Carmen Chavez, owner of Crown School Uniforms, started her Sun Valley business partly on the basis of the new California law three years ago. Although business was very good in the beginning, she said, she now survives largely on parochial school orders.

“I can count on the private schools,” Chavez said. “In the public school, even if they have uniforms, sometimes all that means is a certain color shirt or pants they can buy at Target.”

Millikan Middle School Principal Norman Isaacs, who has soured on uniforms over the past three years, said he is not surprised that interest has declined.

“The uniform is like a bandage,” he said. “It solves some of the symptoms but not the real problem. I think it is going to gradually fade away.”

But politicians continue to promote uniforms as a way to instill the order of parochial school life in the unruly world of public education, where the spread of hip-hop styles has many worrying about 8-year-olds dressing like hoodlums.

As recently as last week, President Clinton praised Long Beach’s mandatory uniform policy at a news conference releasing the results of the first national survey on school crime. The president first called for public school uniforms in his 1996 State of the Union address, citing Long Beach in the days that followed.

Elizabeth Schroeder, an associate director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California--which sued on behalf of Long Beach parents, making it easier to opt out of the uniform requirement--said the focus on uniforms is a distraction.

“It’s an easy way for a school district to approach a problem that has much deeper roots: overcrowding, lack of school books, uncredentialed teachers,” said Schroeder, who added that the ACLU is not opposed to optional uniforms in public schools. Still, she added, “it is not possible to correct the evils of the school system by putting a uniform on a 6-year-old.”

Pacoima Middle School Assistant Principal Robert Krell, who enforces the uniform code at his school, says uniforms are a good place to start.

“We have had a huge decrease in tardies and fights,” he said. Krell’s opinion of the parents of the 12 students excused from wearing uniforms: “They don’t care if their children are safe or not.”

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At Fulton Middle School in Van Nuys, Assistant Principal Lessie Caballero swears by uniforms. “I can’t explain exactly why,” said Caballero, “but there is a real change in the students when they are in uniform. They are better behaved. They come to school to work.”

Students, not surprisingly, are not happy to comply. Uniforms, at least among middle school students, are about as popular as high-water pants.

The cuffs of Rafael Maiez’s pants hang so low they sweep the halls at Fulton as he walks to class. But not for long. At 8:10 on a recent morning, Caballero called Maiez into the school office and made the boy staple up the hem of his navy blue trousers.

“This is stupid,” the 13-year-old said under his breath.

Some seventh-graders at Fulton threatened two weeks ago to boycott the monotony of the school’s blue and black pants, as well as the black, white and baby-blue, collared uniform shirt.

“If 1,600 students refuse to wear the uniform, there is not much we can do. They will win,” Caballero said.

But at nearby Mulholland Middle School, where the more casually dressed student body is similar in every other way to Fulton’s, Tarin said it would probably make little difference.

“I will compare my school’s expulsions and tardies to anyone in the district,” the principal said.

“I like the idea of uniforms. I’d like to see all of my students in them. But I would rather use my time to improve education at this school.”