American Notes CHICAGO

Air Jordans, designer jeans, starter jackets -- the fashion competition among even pre-teenage children on Chicago's grim West Side is not just fierce, it's murderous. Toughs steal high-priced apparel right off their schoolmates' backs, and sometimes the victim gets killed in the process. Now the advisory council at Tilton Elementary School has decided to put an end to the status strife. The school has adopted a new voluntary uniform: navy slacks, white shirts and ties for the boys; white blouses and blue skirts or jumpers for the girls.

Similar dress codes are in force at public inner-city schools in Baltimore, Detroit and New Haven, Conn. Encouraged by the program's success (at week's end 480 of the school's 800 students were wearing the new outfits), members of the advisory council may make uniforms mandatory in September. "Some of the girls say I'm a nerd," said smiling fifth-grader LaDonna Wright, proudly wearing her jumper and blouse, "but I say, 'I'm a radical dudette.' "