Starting in September, the Medford School District will charge a fee for student teachers — $1,200 for students attending in-state colleges and universities, $1,500 for those in out-of-state schools. It will also charge $50 for students studying in-state to have a field experience lasting one to several days in the district, $75 for students who go to school out of state.”

“Medford mentored 30 student teachers in 2010-11. An additional 25 teacher candidates had field experiences there. Had the charges been in effect, they could have added up to a starting teacher’s salary.

“That saves a teacher,” McGair insisted. “That’s important to us, and should be important to colleges and universities if they are trying to place graduating students.”

The librarians have been facing questions from the district’s lawyers, as an administrative law judge seeks to determine if they should be considered as teachers.

At KQED’s California Report, Krissy Clark reports:

In the basement of a building in downtown L.A., there is a makeshift hearing room where school librarians have been quietly defending their jobs over the last few weeks.

One by one, librarians who got layoff notices this spring sat before a judge, while a school district attorney peppered them with questions about their abilities as teachers. “Do you know how to take attendance?” he’d ask. “How many weeks are in a school year?”

Public school districts spent an average of $10,499 per student on elementary and secondary education in the 2009 fiscal year, up 2.3 percent from 2008. In contrast, spending rose by 6.1 percent and 5.8 percent in the two years before that.

“I think they are responding to economic and political realities,” said Robert N. Lowry Jr., deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. “There’s been this recognition that times are different.”

In a widely anticipated decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the state to spend an additional $500 million on public education in poor districts next year.

The complex decision does not boost funding statewide, as education advocates had requested, and may avoid creating a gaping hole in a proposed budget of $29.4 billion. The 3-2 ruling, however, revealed sharp disagreements among the five justices who heard the case and issued a total of four opinions.

Elementary school students would most likely take at least one or two additional tests every year, beginning in the third grade. High school students could take up to eight additional tests a year, and middle school students would also have extra tests. These would be in addition to the state English, math and Regents exams that students already take.

The exams, which would begin rolling out as early as next academic year, are being created as part of a statewide overhaul of how teachers are evaluated. Under a law passed last year that helped the state win $700 million in a federal grant competition, known as Race to the Top, each school district must find a way to evaluate teachers on a scale from “ineffective” to “highly effective,” with teachers facing potential firing if they are rated ineffective for two years in a row.