美国国家公共电台 NPR Education Department Launches 'Top-To-Bottom' Review Of Teachers' Grant Program

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We have an update now on teachers who were given grants to work in low-income schools and then - financial calamity¹. They say their grants were unfairly converted to loans they now have to pay back. After a series of NPR stories revealing this problem and also a government estimate that it's affecting thousands of teachers, the Department of Education now says it has launched a review. NPR's Cory Turner and Chris Arnold report.

CORY TURNER, BYLINE²: The TEACH Grant Program gives teachers money to pay for college or a master's degree in exchange for making a few promises. They agree to teach a high-needs subject, like math, for four years in a school that serves lots of low-income families. That's it.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: It sounds simple enough, but the program also makes them send in paperwork every year certifying³ that they're keeping those promises. And often, a little mistake - a missing signature, a date, anything - can lead to their grants - what was free money - getting converted into loans with interest.

TURNER: After our stories aired, our inboxes and social media accounts filled with messages from teachers saying, this happened to me, too.

KAITLYN MCCOLLUM: It's just - it's ridiculous. It's mind-boggling. It's been two years of torture.

TURNER: Kaitlyn McCollum is a high school teacher in Columbia, Tenn. She says every year, she sent that paperwork in on time. But the fourth year, she says the company that manages the program - it's called FedLoan - it told her they got her paperwork late.

ARNOLD: She says she sent it in on time. But suddenly, her $16,000 of grants became $22,000 in loans, and the interest keeps adding up. By the time she's done paying the government back, it will have cost her $30,000.

MCCOLLUM: I remember going out to the mailbox - and I even opened it up at the mailbox - and sheer panic just set in.

TURNER: McCollum and her husband had just found out she was pregnant with their first child. Money was already tight.

ARNOLD: So McCollum, like many teachers, appealed through FedLoan and said, basically, hey are you kidding me? I'm teaching in a low-income school. I'm doing what I said I would do. How can a little paperwork problem mean I owe this outrageous⁴ amount of money?

TURNER: But FedLoan denied her appeal, saying it could not convert her loans back to grants.

MCCOLLUM: It's just such a hopeless conversation because I'm on the phone - in between classes, pretty much - trying to get all of this information together, crying, trying to plead my case. No, no, no. I would just get shut down time and time again. Oh, they won't do that. They're not going to change their mind. Once these loans are loans, they never get changed back.

TURNER: The company, FedLoan, has told NPR it is committed to resolving borrower issues.

ARNOLD: After two years of fighting, McCollum says she'd given up hope, and many teachers who reached out to us said the same thing. But it turns out it may not be hopeless. We've now learned that the Department of Education has launched a new internal review. The department tells NPR that it is now, quote, "absolutely committed" to improving how it administers the TEACH Grant Program. That includes a new top-to-bottom review of all aspects of it. But teachers like McCollum will have to be patient. Department officials say the review will take time, and it's unclear if teachers will get their money back. The department says it may be limited in what it can do by the rules that Congress wrote for the program.

TURNER: So we wanted to know, what can it do legally to make this right? And to answer that question, we found the perfect lawyer to talk to.

JULIE MICELI: When I was at the department, an issue like what we're seeing with the TEACH grant is the very kind of issue that would've likely fallen on my desk.

ARNOLD: Julie Miceli worked as a deputy general counsel at the Education Department. She was there for five years. So we asked her, could the department make this right? Could it go back and review whether TEACH grants like McCollum's should have been converted, and if not, fix it and give some of these teachers their money back?

MICELI: I think they can. I don't think there's anything in the statute⁵ that relies on complying with a paperwork deadline.

TURNER: And this is a key point. Miceli says what seems to be happening is FedLoan has been strictly⁶ enforcing paperwork rules that she says the Education Department has the authority and the flexibility⁷ to revisit.

ARNOLD: Being so strict about paperwork, she says, goes against the spirit of the TEACH Grant Program. Yes, any program, of course, needs rules and deadlines, but...

MICELI: The consequence is so significant. It's not a fine. It's not a fee that everybody has to deal with. It's a complete conversion⁸ from a grant to a loan. And I don't believe that was the intent where you've got a borrower who's actually meeting the terms of the program.

ARNOLD: Other legal experts we spoke⁹ to also agree with that.

TURNER: Miceli also wants to be clear - she still has friends and former colleagues in the department, and says they're good people who care about education and that no one there is trying to hurt these teachers.

ARNOLD: Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat¹⁰, has introduced bipartisan legislation to reform the TEACH grant and other student loan programs going forward. He, too, says these teachers should get their grants back, in part because this is an important program.

MARK WARNER: And we've got a clear societal need to have good, talented teachers teaching in low-income schools. This is morally the right thing to do. Long term, economically, it's the right thing to do. It needs to get fixed¹¹.

ARNOLD: As the Education Department is figuring out what it's going to do next, it says that teachers who believe that they've had their grants unfairly converted to loans should appeal - first through FedLoan, and then if necessary, through the department's federal student aid ombudsman's office. We have a link to that on our website.

TURNER: That's something Kaitlyn McCollum recently did, and she is now waiting, hoping better news arrives in her mailbox soon. For NPR News, I'm Corey Turner.

ARNOLD: And I'm Chris Arnold.

1 calamity   

n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件

参考例句：

• Even a greater natural calamity cannot daunt us. 再大的自然灾害也压不垮我们。
• The attack on Pearl Harbor was a crushing calamity.偷袭珍珠港(对美军来说)是一场毁灭性的灾难。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 certifying   

（尤指书面）证明( certify的现在分词 )； 发证书给…； 证明（某人）患有精神病； 颁发（或授予）专业合格证书

参考例句：

• Signed Commercial in quintuplicate, certifying merchandise to be of Chinese origin. 签署商业发票一式五份，证明产品的原产地为中国。
• Other documents certifying the truthfulness of the contents of the advertisements. （三）确认广告内容真实性的其他证明文件。

4 outrageous   

adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的

参考例句：

• Her outrageous behaviour at the party offended everyone.她在聚会上的无礼行为触怒了每一个人。
• Charges for local telephone calls are particularly outrageous.本地电话资费贵得出奇。

5 statute   

n.成文法，法令，法规；章程，规则，条例

参考例句：

• Protection for the consumer is laid down by statute.保障消费者利益已在法令里作了规定。
• The next section will consider this environmental statute in detail.下一部分将详细论述环境法令的问题。

6 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

7 flexibility   

n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性

参考例句：

• Her great strength lies in her flexibility.她的优势在于她灵活变通。
• The flexibility of a man's muscles will lessen as he becomes old.人老了肌肉的柔韧性将降低。

8 conversion   

n.转化，转换，转变

参考例句：

• He underwent quite a conversion.他彻底变了。
• Waste conversion is a part of the production process.废物处理是生产过程的一个组成部分。

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 democrat   

n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员

参考例句：

• The Democrat and the Public criticized each other.民主党人和共和党人互相攻击。
• About two years later,he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter.大约两年后，他被民主党人杰米卡特击败。

11 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。