FORGIVENESS VS. DISCHARGE

It’s important to understand the distinction between the two ways in which a person may no longer be responsible for repayment of their student loans.

How much can be forgiven?

The amount of your loans that can be forgiven varies depending on your specific circumstances, but, as a teacher, you may be eligible for forgiveness of $5,000 or $17,500 of your qualified student loans. You may also qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a separate program that offers forgiveness of 100% of your remaining loan after ten years of full-time qualifying employment. For now, let’s focus on TLF and the difference between eligibility for $5,000 and eligibility for $17,500 in loan forgiveness.

You may receive up to $17,500 in loan forgiveness if you were:

• a highly qualified full-time mathematics or science teacher who taught students at the secondary school level; or
• a highly qualified special education teacher (at either the elementary or secondary level) whose primary responsibility was to provide special education to children with disabilities, and you taught children with disabilities that corresponded to your area of special education training and demonstrated knowledge and teaching skills in the content areas of the curriculum that you taught.

You may receive up to $5,00 in loan forgiveness if you were:

• a highly qualified full-time elementary or secondary education teacher who didn’t teach mathematics, science, or special education.

Defining Low-income School or Educational Service Agency

Every year, the U.S. Department of Education publishes its Teacher Cancellation Low Income (TCLI) Directory. To see if your school is on the list, simply visit the TCLI Directory at https://studentaid.gov/tcli/. If it is, you’re eligible; if not, you are ineligible.

If your school or educational service agency is on the list, be sure to enter its name exactly as it appears in the directory; otherwise, your application will be rejected. Think of it like endorsing a check: You endorse a check exactly the way your name appears in the “Pay to the order of” section, so the bank knows you are the person for whom the check was intended. The same is true with entering the name of your school in the application. If you don’t enter the school’s name exactly as it appears in the TCLI Directory, there’s no way to ensure that you are teaching in a school designated for this purpose.

All elementary and secondary schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) or operated on Indian reservations by Indian tribal groups under contract with the BIE qualify as schools serving low-income students. This remains true whether or not they were listed in the TCLI Directory.

What if your school was on the list during one of your five consecutive years of service, but not during the other four?

Don’t worry. If your school or educational service agency is included in the TCLI Directory for at least one year of your teaching service, but is not included during subsequent years, your subsequent years of teaching at the school or educational service agency will still be counted toward the required five complete and consecutive academic years of teaching.

Teaching service performed at an educational service agency may be counted toward the required five years of teaching only if the consecutive five-year period includes qualifying service at an eligible educational service agency performed after the 2007–08 academic year.

As you read these qualifications for Teacher Loan Forgiveness, two terms keep popping up: “qualified low-income school” and “highly qualified teacher.” Since these two terms are key to qualifying for loan forgiveness under this program, let’s have a closer look at what they mean.

What constitutes a highly qualified teacher?

Status as a highly qualified teacher has a set of basic requirements for all teachers, as well as specific requirements depending upon whether you are an elementary or secondary school teacher, or a new teacher.

Basic requirements for all teachers:

To be considered highly qualified, all teachers must have:

• attained at least a bachelor’s degree;
• received full state certification as a teacher; and
• not had certification or licensure requirements waived on an emergency, temporary, or provisional basis.

You’re considered to have received full state certification even if you received your certification through alternative routes to certification or by passing the state teacher licensing examination.

If you’re a teacher at a public charter school, you are considered to have received full state certification as a teacher if you meet the requirements set forth in the state’s public charter school law.