TEACH Grant - Individuals

1845-0084 Affected Public – Individual 7/1/2020

The TEACH Grant Program was included for review in the Negotiated Rulemaking which took place in early 2019. The review occurred, in part, in response to a report by the Government Accountability Office which found concerns with the conversion rates of the TEACH Grants to Direct Unsubsidized Loans. Additionally, a report conducted for the Department by the American Institutes for Research identified multiple factors for the conversion of the TEACH Grants to loans including a lack of understanding of the service obligation and of the need for annual certification of qualifying teaching.

Addressing the concerns raised by these studies, the U.S. Department of Education and negotiators developed amendments to simplify the current TEACH Grant regulation to improve program understanding to reduce grant-to-loan conversions, as well as to update, strengthen, and clarify other areas of the TEACH Grant Program regulations.

Section 686.32 of the TEACH Grant regulations is being updated via this information collection. The final regulations in section 686.32 revise the information that is provided to TEACH Grant recipients during initial, subsequent, and exit counseling. The final regulations also add a new conversion counseling requirement for grant recipients whose TEACH Grants are converted to Direct Unsubsidized Loans. This conversion counseling material will be provided directly to the recipient from the Department based on the last address provided by the recipient.

Current Burden Associated with this information collection:

# of Respondents # of Responses #Burden Hours

37,797 232,324 36,673

Revised Burden for this information collection:

# of Respondents # of Responses #Burden Hours

39,317 233,844 37,175

Difference:

# of Respondents # of Responses #Burden Hours

+1,520 +1,520 +502