If you’re a teacher who has federal student loans or if you know a teacher who has federal student loans this blog is for you because we are going to touch on Teacher Loan Forgiveness.

Eligible loans for this forgiveness program include any Direct Loans or Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) that were issued after October 1, 1998. Other eligibility requirements are that you must be a full time, highly qualified teacher for 5 complete and consecutive academic years (at least 1 year has to be after 1998) in a low income school.

Teacher Loan Forgiveness can forgive up to $17,500 for eligible loans if you are/were a highly qualified full time math, science or special education teacher at a qualifying school, as mentioned prior. If you aren’t a math, science or special education teacher but are highly qualified and an elementary or secondary education teacher you could be eligible for up to $5,000 to be forgiven.

It’s important to know that you can receive forgiveness for both Teacher Loan Forgiveness and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), but not at the same time. You would want to do an analysis to determine what the most optimal forgiveness strategy is for your unique situation.