Middle-school fashion bullies?

Vanessa O'Connell has an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal Online -- fashion bullying. From interviewing students in our suburban alternative education programs, we know that this type of social pressure is one of the things that causes kids to consider dropping out of school. Students have told us that, when they changed to the alternative program, they felt a huge sense of relief -- they didn't have to deal with being in the out-group anymore.

As O'Connell's article notes, that kind of social pressure isn't limited to the cities and suburbs anymore. It's an important but overlooked factor in students' attention, effort, and motivation to come to school each day.

The marketing people are now targeting kid fashion -- bigtime. It's not going to be pretty....