TEACH Grant

If you don’t complete your TEACH Grant service obligation, your TEACH Grants will be converted to Direct Unsubsidized Loans that you must repay in full, with interest charged from the date of each TEACH Grant disbursement. You can also ask to have your TEACH Grants converted to loans if you’ve decided not to teach, or for any other reason. Potential interest is the amount of interest you’ll have to repay if your grants are ever converted to loans.

We’ll periodically notify you of the amount of interest you would potentially be responsible for paying if your grants are ever converted to loans.

Remember that you must complete your required four years of qualifying teaching service within eight years after you leave the school where you received your TEACH Grants. To avoid having your TEACH Grants converted to loans, be sure to submit certification of your qualifying service after you complete each of your four years of teaching. We’ll send you a reminder of this requirement at least once each year.

Highly qualified is defined in the TEACH Grant Agreement to Serve or Repay that you were required to sign before receiving each of your TEACH Grants. If you have any questions about whether you meet the requirements to be considered highly qualified, check with the chief administrative officer at the school or educational service agency where you are teaching.

You’re teaching in a high-need field if you teach a majority of your classes in one or more of following subjects/areas:

• Bilingual education or English language acquisition

• Foreign language

• Math

• Reading specialist

• Science (including, but not limited to, computer science)

• Special education, or

• Another high-need field listed in the Teacher Shortage Area Nationwide Listing (Nationwide List)
  (including a high-need geographic area or grade level)

You can satisfy your TEACH Grant service obligation by teaching in a high-need field listed in the Nationwide List only if —

• The high-need field is listed in the Nationwide List for the state where you are teaching at the time you begin teaching in that field (even if that field later loses its high-need designation); or

• The high-need field was listed in the Nationwide List for the state where you are teaching at the time you signed the Agreement to Serve or Repay or received a TEACH Grant (even if that field is no longer listed as high-need when you begin teaching in that field).

A school or educational service agency serving low-income students is a public or private elementary or secondary school or educational service agency that:

• Is in a school district of a local educational agency that is eligible for assistance under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act;

• Has been determined by the U.S. Department of Education to be a school or educational service agency in which more than 30% of the school's or educational service agency's total enrollment is made up of children who qualify for services provided under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and

• Is listed in the U.S. Department of Education's Annual Directory of Designated Low-Income Schools for Teacher Cancellation Benefits (TCLI Directory) ; or

• Is an elementary or secondary school operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) or operated on Indian reservations by Indian tribal groups under contract or grant with the BIE.

State education agencies report qualifying elementary schools, secondary schools, and educational service agencies to the U.S. Department of Education each year to be included in the TCLI Directory.

If the school or educational service agency where you teach meets the low-income requirements in the first year of your required 4 academic years of teaching but does not meet those requirements in subsequent academic years, those subsequent years of teaching at that school or educational service agency will still qualify for purposes of satisfying your TEACH Grant service obligation.

No. If you began your teaching service prior to the date the low-income school or educational service agency lost its status, teaching at this school can still be considered qualifying teaching service because you began your service before the school lost the low-income status.

• You should submit a TEACH Grant Certification of Qualifying Teaching form after you complete each of your required 4 academic years of teaching.

• We will remind you annually that you should certify after you complete each year of teaching. Don’t wait to certify until after you’ve completed all 4 years of your service obligation. If you don’t show that you’re making progress toward satisfying your service obligation and there isn’t enough time remaining for you to complete your required 4 years of teaching within your 8-year service obligation period, your TEACH Grants will be converted to Direct Unsubsidized Loans.

• You can check on your progress toward satisfying your service obligation and find other pertinent TEACH Grant information by checking your grant status in Account Access.

You can give us permission to release account information to individuals you authorize. Although they can receive specific information about your account, they CANNOT make changes. A signed Power of Attorney is needed to authorize a third party to make changes to your account, obtain additional information, and/or perform various actions on your behalf.

As explained in the Agreement to Serve or Repay (Agreement) that you signed before receiving each of your TEACH Grants, you must complete 4 academic years of teaching within 8 years from the time you cease enrollment at the school where you received your TEACH Grants. When we remind you that you should provide certification of your service after you complete each year of qualifying teaching, we’ll let you know if it appears you do not have enough time remaining to complete your required 4 years of teaching within your 8-year service obligation period, and will tell you the date by which you must provide documentation of your teaching in order to avoid having your grants converted to loans.

If you meet certain requirements, the 8-year period for completing your service obligation can be temporarily suspended. After you cease enrollment at the school where you received your TEACH Grants, you may request a suspension of the 8-year period for completing your service obligation if you are temporarily unable to teach because:

• You are enrolled in a program of study for which you would be eligible to receive a TEACH Grant, or you are enrolled in a program that has been determined by a state to satisfy the requirements for certification or licensure to teach in the state’s elementary or secondary schools (qualifying program suspension);

• You are receiving state-required instruction or otherwise fulfilling requirements for licensure to teach in a state’s elementary or secondary schools (state-required instruction suspension);

• You have a condition that is a qualifying reason for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA suspension; see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla for more information);

• You are called or ordered to Federal or State active duty, or Active Service as a member of a Reserve Component of the Armed Forces named in 10 U.S.C. 10101, or service as a member of the National Guard on full-time National Guard duty, as defined in 10 U.S.C. 101(d) (military service suspension);

• You are the spouse of a military service member, and your spouse has received military orders for a deployment with a military unit or as an individual in support of a military operation for a period of not less than 180 days, or has received military orders for a change of permanent duty station from a location in the continental United States to a location outside the continental United States, or from a location in a state to any location outside of that state (military spouse suspension); or

• You reside in or are employed in a federally declared major disaster area as defined in the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (disaster area suspension).

• 3 years for the qualifying program, state-required instruction, and FMLA suspensions (combined limit for all 3 suspension types);

• 3 years for the military service suspension;

• 3 years for the military spouse suspension; and

• 3 years for the disaster area suspension.

If you no longer intend to satisfy your service obligation because you’ve decided not to teach, or you’ve decided not to teach in a low-income school or in a high-need field, or for any other reason, you may request to have your TEACH Grants converted to Direct Unsubsidized Loans. This request must be made online through your Account Access. Follow the instructions under the option: "I will not meet my service obligation. I'd like to convert my TEACH Grants to loans." It will take at least 48 hours for your grants to convert to loans. Therefore, you won't be able to access your loans (or make payments) for several days after you submit your request.

If your TEACH Grants were converted to Direct Unsubsidized Loans for any reason other than at your request, we will change the loans back to grants if we determine, based on documentation that you provide or based on information in our records, that:

• You were satisfying your TEACH Grant service obligation; or

• Your TEACH Grant was converted to a loan in error.

If you previously asked us to convert your TEACH Grants to loans, we will change the loans back to TEACH Grants if:

• Not including any periods of suspension, you still have enough time to complete your required 4 years of qualifying teaching within 8 years from the date you ceased enrollment at the school where you received your TEACH Grants; or

• If you would not have enough time to complete your service obligation within the 8-year service obligation period unless you qualify for a temporary suspension of that period, you request and are determined to be eligible for a suspension, which may be applied retroactively.

For more information, please see the TEACH Grant Conversion Counseling Guide which prepares you to begin repaying your new Direct Unsubsidized Loans that were converted from TEACH Grants. It covers your rights and responsibilities related to repayment of your loans, and also explains the conditions under which you can ask the TEACH Grant servicer to reconsider the conversion of your TEACH Grants to loans.