Fill Out TEACH Grant Certification of Qualifying Teaching Online

What counts as qualifying teaching

The service obligation has three pillars, and the form checks all of them. You must teach full time as a highly qualified teacher, at a low-income school or educational service agency listed in the Department of Education's Teacher Cancellation Low-Income (TCLI) Directory, and teach the majority of your classes in a high-need field.

High-need fields include bilingual education and English language acquisition, foreign language, mathematics, reading specialist, science including computer science, special education, and any other field listed for your state in the annual Teacher Shortage Area Nationwide Listing. Schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education qualify as low-income schools even when not listed in the TCLI Directory, and a school that qualifies during one of your years of teaching continues to count in later years even if it drops off the list.

Why timely certification matters

TEACH Grants convert to Direct Unsubsidized Loans if the recipient does not begin or maintain qualifying teaching on a schedule that allows completion of the four required years within the eight-year window. After conversion, the full grant amounts must be repaid with interest charged from the date of each original disbursement.

Submitting this certification after each completed school year is how you prove progress and keep the grants from converting. The servicer can also request a certification showing you have begun teaching, using the same form.

How to complete the form

The form splits between you and the chief administrative officer (CAO) at your school or educational service agency:

• Section 1: confirm or correct your identifying information, including SSN, name, address, and contact details.
• Section 2: answer the questions about your teaching, including whether you completed a full school year or have begun teaching, whether you taught full time, whether the school is a qualifying low-income school, the setting, and the high-need field or fields you taught in.
• Section 3: sign and date the certification, which confirms your answers are true and acknowledges the loan conversion terms.
• Section 4: hand the form to your CAO, typically a superintendent, human resources official, principal, or assistant principal with access to your employment records. The CAO certifies your full-time, highly qualified status, the high-need classes, and the school year taught, then signs and returns the form to you.
• If you taught at different schools or agencies in the same year, each school's CAO must complete a certification. The form includes an extra CAO section for this, and your name and SSN go at the top of every certification page.
• Submit the completed form to your TEACH Grant servicer by mail, fax, or the servicer's online upload, using the contact details your servicer provides.

Special rules the form covers

A school year can be satisfied in more than one way: one complete year at the same school, two complete and consecutive half years at different schools within the same school year, or two complete and consecutive half years across different school years. Summer sessions do not count as half years.

A partial year can still count in limited cases. If you completed at least half of a school year and your employer considers your contract fulfilled for salary, tenure, and retirement purposes, the year may count when the interruption was due to a condition covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act, a call to military active duty, or residing or working in a federally declared major disaster area.