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The Department of Education will give teachers another chance to demonstrate their eligibility for the federal TEACH Grant program, according to a report by NPR.
Undergraduate and graduate students can receive the TEACH Grant if they promise to teach in a high-need field at a public school serving low-income students for four out of eight years after graduating college. But a department study released in March found that 63 percent of recipients who began teaching before July 2014 had their grants converted to loans after they failed to meet eligibility requirements or submit annual recertification documents.
The department told NPR it would allow instructors saddled with loan debt because of paperwork issues to show they had met all program requirements and have those loans canceled.
On Monday, the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen released a report finding failings in the management and oversight of the program by the Education Department. Among those findings, Public Citizen said the department had not submitted necessary reports to Congress so it could evaluate the program and that it was slow to stop collection of debts from recipients whose grants had been erroneously converted to loans.
