The TEACH grants sound like a great idea on the surface: give students who agree to teach in low-income, high-needs areas $4,000 grants for up to four years while they attend accredited education programs. It's the details that become sticky:
- The "grants" aren't really grants at all; they convert automatically to loans if the student doesn't meet certain conditions. Recipients must teach four academic years in a high-poverty school and in a high-needs area, by at most eight years after finishing coursework.
- Interest accumulates from the moment the student receives the TEACH "grant," not from the time they fail to meet their commitment.
- Regardless of how long the teacher taught, if it's less than four years, he or she owes the full amount (plus the aforementioned interest).
- No matter how many years the student received the "grants," he or she must commit to the full four-year teaching requirement.
- "High-needs" does not stay the same year-to-year. While some categories of teachers would be guaranteed by federal law to meet the "high-needs" requirement, those qualifying under state rules would be more susceptible to changes. If a TEACH recipient moved to a different state or if their home state changed their "high-needs" definition, they may suddenly have to pay off what they once thought was a grant. This document shows the changes over time of state teacher shortage areas. Compare any two states, or even a single state over time, and the differences are striking. North Dakota, for example, had 19 teacher shortage areas in 2007-8 while South Dakota had only six. Kansas had 14 areas in 2006-7, but only seven this year. Michigan had elementary teachers listed from 2002 to 2004, but hasn't since (the inclusion of elementary teachers is particularly important, because the federal regulations deal with them ambiguously).
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