npr:

Nearly 2,300 teachers have just had a mountain of student loan debt lifted off their backs, according to previously unreleased figures from the U.S. Department of Education. The move follows reporting by NPR that exposed a nightmare for public school teachers across the country.

In exchange for agreeing to work in low-income schools, aspiring teachers could get federal Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grants from the department to help pay their way through college. But those grants were often unfairly turned into loans that teachers had to pay back.

In December, the Education Department proposed a fix. Now, that fix has been expanded, and thousands more teachers are likely to get help.

“We’ve put teachers who didn’t deserve this stress, this pressure, this financial burden in a position that is frightening and confusing,” says Education Department acting undersecretary and acting assistant secretary Diane Auer Jones. “I can’t give them back those years, and I can’t take away the gray hairs and I can’t take away the stress. It seems like a small thing to do to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but I’m very sorry. And we want to work to fix it and correct it.”

Teachers Begin To See Unfair Student Loans Disappear

Photo: Beth Nakamura for NPR
Caption: Victoria Libsack, a teacher at Linus Pauling Middle School in Corvallis, Ore., with students Alan Gallardo, 14, (right) and Victor Hernandez, 14. Libsack taught for three years in a low-income Phoenix school. But after her TEACH grants were converted into more than $20,000 in loans, she took a job at a school that doesn’t meet TEACH requirements.