We report on results of numerical studies of the spin polarization of the half filled second Landau level, which corresponds to the fractional quantum Hall state at filling factor $ u=5/2$. Our studies are performed using both exact diagonalization and Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) on the sphere. We find that for the Coulomb interaction the exact finite-system ground state is fully polarized, for shifts corresponding to both the Moore-Read Pfaffian state and its particle-hole conjugate (anti-Pfaffian). This result is found to be robust against small variations of the interaction. The low-energy excitation spectrum is consistent with spin-wave excitations of a fully-magnetized ferromagnet.