How Effective Are Loan Forgiveness and Service Scholarships for Recruiting Teachers? Policy Brief

Recruiting and retaining talented individuals into the teaching workforce, especially in schools in underserved urban and rural communities, is challenging when college graduates face more lucrative professional alternatives and often carry significant student debt. Two promising approaches to attracting and keeping teachers in the profession are to offer loan forgiveness or service scholarships to prospective teachers--similar to what the medical profession has used to attract practitioners into underserved communities. Existing research on teacher and physician loan forgiveness and service scholarship programs suggests that, when the financial benefit meaningfully offsets the cost of professional preparation, these programs can successfully recruit and retain high-quality professionals into fields and communities where they are most needed.