A New Jersey boy was sent home from middle school for dressing up as Jesus Christ — complete with fake beard and crown of thorns — for the Halloween party.

Alex Woinski, 13, said school officials told him his costume was “offensive to some students.” Principal Joan Broe told CBS 2 that the costume was a disruption, not a religious issue.

Broe said too many students were drawn to the costume, and that was reason enough.

“Children were [asking], where is the boy who is Jesus Christ?” she said. “It was disrupting the education process.”

Woinski’s father is Jewish. Well, that fits. His mother is Catholic. Hmmm. He recently celebrated his bar mitzvah.

Steve’s seventh-grade son came home with a list of the seven styles of learning: linguistic, logical/mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal.  He’s supposed to draw pictures of science definitions, design a book dust cover for language arts and make a diorama for social studies. “Only in math does he have regular homework,” Steve writes on Kitchen Table Math.

Did you ever notice that they don’t let kids decide on and use whichever style works best for them. Everyone has to do the artwork. Everybody has to work in groups. What about the poor intrapersonal learner who is no good in art and likes to work by himself? Tough s***. What about my son, who is extremely good in music. What the heck does that mean?

Dan Willingham, a cognitive scientist at University of Virginia, says the student’s preferred learning style doesn’t matter. What counts is what modality matches the content of what the teacher is trying to teach.

The top candidates can relate to teachers, notes Education Week. Barack Obama’s half-sister has taught in public and private schools, including charters. Joe Biden’s wife has taught high school and community college classes. On the GOP side, John McCain’s wife was a special education teacher; Sarah Palin’s father was a science teacher, her mother was a school secretary and her brother is an elementary teacher.

I wonder why Cindy McCain doesn’t talk about her teaching experiences. Of course, she doesn’t talk much about her charity work either. Or her alien ancestry.

In my freelance life, I’m writing a “primer” for education reporters on K-12 “rigor,” which is a hot word in education these days. I’m asking people: How do you define it? How do you measure it? Is rigor only for college-prep programs or are there rigorous ways to educate students who aren’t college-bound?

Gentle readers, feel free to jump in. What does rigor mean in your school? What should it mean?

I fear that the quest for rigor will lead to schools requiring all students to enroll in college-prep classes, which then will be dumbed-down so nearly everyone can pass. AP already is struggling to maintain its college-level cachet as more schools open classes to less capable students.

Most parents of students at low-performing high schools say they want more information about their child’s academic progress, reports a Civic Enterprises report, One Dream, Two Realities. From the Christian Science Monitor:

In schools considered high performing, 83 percent of parents say the school did a fairly good or very good job communicating about their child’s academic progress. Just 43 percent say the same of low-performing schools. Only 51 percent of parents in low-performing schools say they’ve had good conversations with half of their child’s teachers (versus 70 percent in high-performers).

. . . (The report) shows broad support for a number of steps that schools could take, including a single point of contact for parents and a way to check grades on the Internet. Six of 10 parents in low-performing schools say it would be extremely helpful to be notified when a student is cutting classes or having academic problems.

Parents want their children to go to college but may not know what they should be doing to get them there.

In Our School, I write about Pedro’s parents, who complained that nobody at his comprehensive high school called to tell them he was cutting class. They didn’t realize what was going on till it was too late. I’ve heard that again and again from immigrant parents: Why didn’t they tell us when it was early enough to do something? Why did we have to find out when he flunked all his classes?

“You Can Vote However You Like” sing sixth- and seventh-graders from Ron Clark Academy, a private, non-profit school serving primarily low-income black students. The kids advocate voting and debate policies: Half back Obama and half argue for McCain. The song is a rewrite of a tune by a rapper called T.I. In a TV interview, the students seem sharper than the interviewer.

The mean girl in me enjoys Ohio Education Gadfly’s snarky response to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s education reform blueprint. Under Exciting 21st Century Learning Environments:

Governor’s proposal: Our schools must become collaborative continuous learning organizations that build a culture of strong relationships, professionalism, collaboration, and common purpose for all students.

Gadfly translates: Our schools will be leaderless, directionless centers of feel-goodism.

Under Efficient Accountability and Resource Management Systems: 

Governor’s proposal: Improving our technology system to meet the needs of our students in the 21st Century.

Gadfly translates: We still don’t know how to use the computers that we have but we’ll get some more.

I’m getting sick of the 21st century and we still have more than nine decades to go.

Update: Jay Mathews’ column on a report calling for “21st century skills” is on point.

It listed the “21st century skills” that our children need for the rapidly evolving labor market. These included thinking critically and making judgments, solving complex, multidisciplinary, open-ended problems, developing creative and entrepreneurial thinking, communicating and collaborating, making innovative use of knowledge, information and opportunities and taking charge of financial, health and civic responsibilities.

. . . How in the name of every teacher who has ever contemplated suicide during the unit on fractions are we supposed to make those things happen?

By creating collaborative continuous learning organizations!

A federal test of technology literacy is being developed for the National Assessment Governing Board, which runs the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). From Business Week:

NAGB officials and others hope the test will help reverse the slide in U.S. test scores and enrollment in such subjects as science, math, and engineering, and ultimately address the more generally waning competitiveness of the U.S. in technology . . .

Enrollment in graduate-level computer science and engineering is dropping, says the National Science Foundation. The number of full-time graduate enrollments in computer science and engineering courses decreased 11%, to 29,800, in 2004, the last year for which data is available, since peaking in 2002, according to the foundation. The number of foreigners with bachelor’s degrees holding jobs in U.S. science and engineering almost doubled, to 19%, from 1990 to 2005.

Test developers will consult with teachers and with representatives from Intel, Google and other companies to write a test for use by 2012.

If you test it, will they learn?

First-year teachers who work with mentors, receive extra training and observe experienced teachers don’t outperform other new teachers, concludes a Mathematica study.  Researchers looked at two high-intensity induction models that cost considerably more than the support new teachers typically get.

Findings from the first year showed that although treatment group teachers received significantly more mentoring, received more guidance on instructional practices, and spent more time in certain professional activities than did control group teachers, there were no impacts on teacher practices, based on in-classroom observations of literacy lessons. In addition, the more intensive support had no positive impact on student test scores or teacher retention in the first year.

You’d think there would be some benefit. Teachers, do you have a theory why mentoring and support didn’t make a difference?

The teachers will be followed for two more years to see if there are effects that don’t show up in the first year.

Update: Training doesn’t solve every problem, writes Jay Greene.

Eduwonk wonders if we need a radical redesign of how teachers are trained.