If you are a teacher or an academically talented
student pursuing a career in special education, you may be eligible for the
Illinois Special Education Teacher Tuition Waiver Program if you teach at one
of the following Illinois schools that has been approved by the Illinois State
Board of Education (ISBE):
- a
nonprofit public, private or parochial preschool, or
- a
nonprofit public, private or parochial elementary school, or
- a
nonprofit public, private or parochial secondary school.
This program will exempt you from paying tuition and
mandatory fees at an eligible
institution for up to four calendar years, provided you have not yet
obtained an initial licensure in any area of special education. Mandatory fees
are those assessed by a college that are required to deliver educational
services to students for each term, regardless if the student is attending
on-campus or through distance education. Examples include fees for activities,
facility operations, grants, health, registration, technology, transportation
and – when applicable – fees associated with online learning. The
college determines fees that are considered mandatory.
By receiving the tuition waiver, you must teach in Illinois in
the field of special education. If this teaching commitment is not fulfilled,
the amount of benefits received converts to a loan, and you must repay the entire amount plus interest. It is recommended
that you monitor your college billing statements to keep track of the amount
waived, in the unlikely event the tuition waiver converts to a loan. You can
estimate the loan payments by accessing the Monthly Payment Estimates
Calculator on this website.
SETTW recipients, including those who are pursuing or
have secured a position as a Speech-Language Pathologist, should take note that
in order to fulfill the teaching requirements, their position must be that of a
“teacher”, as certified by their employing school official. A “teacher”
is defined as a person who provides direct classroom-type teaching or
classroom-type teaching in a non-classroom setting.
Accordingly, only if a Speech-Language Pathologist’s teaching position meets
the above definition, and is certified as such by the school official, would
the position be considered as fulfilling the SETTW teaching requirements.
Eligibility
To be eligible, you must:
- meet
one of the following conditions: you are a high school graduate; or you
are scheduled to graduate from an approved high school by the end of the
academic year in which the award is made and you performed in the upper
half of your graduating class according to performance-based academic data
provided by the high school; or you hold a valid teaching license that is
not in the discipline of special education
- be
enrolled, or accepted for enrollment, at one of the eligible public
four-year colleges in Illinois (providing the institution
offers a concentration in Special Education) as an undergraduate or
graduate student seeking initial licensure in any area of special
education
- be
enrolled in a program of special education within 10 days after the
beginning of the term for which the waiver was initially awarded
- not
at any time have received cumulative Illinois Special Education Teacher
Tuition Waiver benefits that equal or exceed the program maximum of four
calendar years (note that, once you obtain an initial licensure in any
area of special education, you are no longer eligible for this program
regardless of how many years you have used the waiver)
- complete
the application process by:
- submitting
a fully-completed Illinois Special Education Teacher Tuition Waiver
Program application, which includes the Teaching Agreement/Master
Promissory Note (in order to receive priority consideration for an award,
the complete application must be received at ISAC on or before the March
1 immediately preceding the academic year for which the tuition waiver is
requested),
- being
certified as meeting eligibility requirements by the college at which you
will use the tuition waiver, and
- accepting
the tuition waiver (if one is offered)*
- sign
the application's Teaching Agreement/Master Promissory Note promising to
fulfill the teaching commitment or repay funds received plus interest
- maintain
satisfactory academic progress as determined by your college
- remain
in attendance at the college on a continuous basis for up to four years
(unless granted an approved leave of absence, in which case the course of
study must be completed within six years)
* Once an academic year has ended, adjustments to
benefits received will not be made for individuals who originally had their
expenses (e.g., tuition and fees) covered using those benefits (i.e., the
applicant cannot choose to "pay back" the dollar amount of benefits
used in order to reinstate eligibility for the future).
In addition to eligibility requirements, applicants
should also be aware of the rights and responsibilities for program
recipients.
How to Apply
The Illinois
Special Education Teacher Tuition Waiver (SETTW) Program Application/Teaching
Agreement/Promissory Note is accessed online via the Program
Applications & Status Checks area of the ISAC Student Portal.
In order to complete this online application, you must
log in to the ISAC Student Portal (if you have not already done so, you
may create a profile here). For
priority consideration, your complete application must be submitted (i.e.,
electronically signed or postmarked) on or before March 1 preceding the
academic year for which you are applying. Applications submitted after that
date will be given consideration for the award if, after the initial round of
awarding, all 250 available tuition waivers have not been awarded. If you are
eligible for the Illinois Special Education Teacher Tuition Waiver, you will
receive a notice of eligibility by July 1.
If you applied, but were not selected to receive the
waiver or you did not use a waiver you had been awarded, you may reapply in
subsequent years. However, once you've received and used a tuition waiver, you
do not need to reapply for consideration for additional years.
Even if you are not certain where you will be
attending college in the fall, you are strongly encouraged to submit a complete
application on or before the March 1 priority application consideration date,
listing the approved Illinois college you are most likely to attend. If you
then decide to attend a different college after your application has been
submitted, you must report that change to ISAC, as described below in the Changes
to Application Data section.
When a new Illinois SETTW recipient is named, the
college must provide ISAC with verification of the student's enrollment and
program eligibility. The college is also asked to verify the recipient's
enrollment and continued eligibility status for each academic year that the
tuition waiver is renewed.